Related papers: Constraining the Fluctuating Gunn-Peterson Approxi…
Massive spectroscopic surveys of high-redshift quasars yield large numbers of correlated Lyman {\alpha} absorption spectra that can be used to measure large-scale structure. Simulations of these surveys are required to accurately interpret…
The Lyman-$\alpha$ forest is a powerful probe for cosmology, but it is also strongly impacted by galaxy evolution and baryonic processes such as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) feedback, which can redistribute mass and energy on large scales.…
Using a series of carefully constructed numerical experiments based on hydrodynamic cosmological SPH simulations, we attempt to build an intuition for the relevant physics behind the large scale density ($b_\delta$) and velocity gradient…
We use a cosmological hydrodynamic simulation of a cold dark matter universe to investigate theoretically the relationship between high redshift galaxies and the Lyman=alpha forest at redshift z=3. Galaxies in the simulation are surrounded…
We present a measurement of the Lyman alpha flux probability distribution function (PDF) measured from a set of eight high resolution quasar spectra with emission redshifts at 3.3 < z < 3.8. We carefully study the effect of metal absorption…
The post-reionization thermal state of the intergalactic medium is characterized by a power-law relationship between temperature and density, with a slope determined by the parameter $\gamma$. We describe a new method to measure $\gamma$…
The forest of Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption lines detected in the spectra of distant quasars encodes information on the nature and properties of dark matter and the thermodynamics of diffuse baryonic material. Its main observable -- the 1D flux…
We present a novel technique called "photometric IGM tomography" to map the intergalactic medium (IGM) at $z\simeq4.9$ in the COSMOS field. It utilizes deep narrow-band (NB) imaging to photometrically detect faint Ly$\alpha$ forest…
We present a novel procedure to estimate the Equation of State of the intergalactic medium in the quasi-linear regime of structure formation based on Ly$\alpha$ forest tomography and apply it to 21 high quality quasar spectra from the…
The amplitude of fluctuations in the Ly-a forest on small spatial scales is sensitive to the temperature of the IGM and its spatial fluctuations. The temperature of the IGM and its spatial variations contain important information about…
We quantify the impact of massive neutrinos on the statistics of low density regions in the intergalactic medium (IGM) as probed by the Lyman-alpha forest at redshifts z=2.2--4. Based on mock but realistic quasar (QSO) spectra extracted…
It has been recently found that the local fluctuations of the QSO's Ly$\alpha$ absorption spectrum transmitted flux show spiky structures. This implies that the mass fields of the intergalactic medium (IGM) is intermittent. This feature…
We outline the physical picture of the high-redshift Ly-alpha forest that has emerged from cosmological simulations, describe statistical characteristics of the forest that can be used to test theories of structure formation, present a…
The angular positions of quasars are deflected by the gravitational lensing effect of foreground matter. The Lyman-alpha forest seen in the spectra of these quasars is therefore also lensed. We propose that the signature of weak…
We explore several physical effects on the power spectrum of the Lyman-alpha forest transmitted flux. The effects we investigate here are usually not part of hydrodynamic simulations and so need to be estimated separately. The most…
The low-redshift evolution of the intergalactic medium is investigated using hydrodynamic cosmological simulations. The assumed cosmological model is a critical density cold dark matter universe. The imposed uniform background of ionizing…
The combined analysis of the cosmic microwave background on large scales and Lyman-alpha forest on small scales provides a sufficiently long lever arm to obtain strong constraints on the slope and curvature of the power spectrum of…
We study the statistics of the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest in a flat LCDM cosmology with the N-body + Eulerian hydrodynamics code Nyx. We produce a suite of simulations, covering the observationally relevant redshift range $2 \leq z \leq 4$. We…
Recent observations have discovered long (up to ~110 Mpc/h), opaque Gunn-Peterson troughs in the z ~ 5.5 Lyman-alpha forest, which are challenging to explain with conventional models of the post-reionization intergalactic medium. Here we…
We implement the hydro-PM (HPM) technique (Gnedin & Hui 1998) in the hydrodynamical simulation code GADGET-II and quantify the differences between this approximate method and full hydrodynamical simulations of the Lyman-alpha forest in a…