Related papers: Large Fluctuations in the High-Redshift Metagalact…
We have measured the transmission of the Lyman alpha forest produced by neutral hydrogen scattering in the intergalactic medium between redshifts 2 and 6.3 using high signal to noise, high resolution (R > 5000) observations of 50 quasars…
We present new results from the widest narrow band survey search for Lyman-alpha (Lya) emitters at z=5.7, just after reionization. We survey a total of 7 deg$^2$ spread over the COSMOS, UDS and SA22 fields. We find over 11,000 line…
(abridged) We present an effective implementation of analytical calculations of the Lyalpha opacity distribution of the Intergalactic Medium (IGM) along multiple lines of sight (LOS) to distant quasars in a cosmological setting. This method…
A variety of independent observational studies have now reported a significant decline in the fraction of Lyman-break galaxies which exhibit Ly-a emission over the redshift interval z=6-7. In combination with the strong damping wing…
The ionizing background of cosmic hydrogen is an important probe of the sources and absorbers of ionizing radiation in the post-reionization universe. Previous studies show that the ionization rate should be very sensitive to changes in the…
Our understanding of the intergalactic medium at redshifts $z=5$-$6$ has improved considerably in the last few years due to the discovery of quasars with $z>6$ that enable Lyman-$\alpha$ forest studies at these redshifts. A realisation from…
In gravitational instability models, there is a close relationship between most Lyman-alpha absorption and the matter density along the line of sight. Croft et al. (1997) have shown that it is possible to use this relationship with some…
We measure the large-scale cross-correlation of quasars with the Lyman \alpha\ forest absorption in redshift space, using ~ 60000 quasar spectra from Data Release 9 (DR9) of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). The…
We reassess constraints on the cosmological baryon density from observations of the mean decrement and power spectrum of the Lyman-alpha forest, taking into account uncertainties in all free parameters in the simplest gravitational…
Metal line ratios in a sample of 13 quasar spectra obtained with the HIRES spectrograph on the KeckI telescope have been analyzed to characterize the evolution of the metagalactic ionizing flux near a redshift of 3. The evolution of…
We present predictions of the correlation between the Lyman-alpha forest absorption in quasar spectra and the mass within \sim 5 Mpc/h (comoving) of the line of sight, using fully hydrodynamic and hydro-PM numerical simulations of the cold…
An analytical framework is presented to understand the effects of a fluctuating intensity of the cosmic ionising background on the correlations of the Ly{\alpha} forest transmission fraction measured in quasar spectra. In the absence of…
The analysis of the Lyman-alpha forest of absorption lines in quasar spectra has emerged as a potentially powerful technique to constrain the linear matter power spectrum. In most previous work, the amplitude of the ionizing background was…
We investigate the implications of our measurement of the Lyman-alpha forest opacity at redshifts 2<z<4.2 from a sample of 86 high-resolution quasar spectra for the evolution of the cosmic ultraviolet luminosity density and its sources. The…
We measure the intergalactic medium (IGM) opacity in the Ly$\alpha$ as well as in the Ly$\beta$ forest along $19$ quasar sightlines between $5.5\lesssim z_{\rm abs}\lesssim 6.1$, probing the end stages of the reionization epoch. Owing to…
We have measured the distribution function of the flux decrement caused by Lyman alpha forest absorption in a new sample of high resolution QSO spectra. The observations are compared to the results from two simulations of the Lya forest: an…
Known populations of QSOs appear to fall short of producing the ionizing flux required for re-ionizing the universe. The alternative, galaxies as sources of ionizing photons, suffers from the problem that known types of galaxies are almost…
We present a computationally efficient and fast semi-numerical technique for simulating the Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) absorption optical depth in presence of neutral hydrogen "islands" left over from reionization at redshifts $5 \lesssim…
The presence of excess scatter in the Ly-$\alpha$ forest at $z\sim 5.5$, together with the existence of sporadic extended opaque Gunn-Peterson troughs, has started to provide robust evidence for a late end of hydrogen reionisation. However,…
The epoch of reionization (6 < z < 10) marks the period in our universe when the first large galaxies grew to fruition, and began to affect the universe around them. Massive stars, and potentially accreting supermassive black holes, filled…