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Lyman-$\alpha$ damping wings towards quasars provide a unique probe of reionization because their strength correlates strongly with the global volume-averaged neutral hydrogen (HI) fraction of the intergalactic medium (IGM). Cosmic variance…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-11-26 Timo Kist , Joseph F. Hennawi , Frederick B. Davies

Line Intensity Mapping (LIM) has garnered attention as a powerful cosmological probe, with next-generation instruments such as SPHEREx preparing to map the evolution of large-scale structure during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR).…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-12-09 Mouza Almualla , Aaron Smith , Rahul Kannan , Lars Hernquist , Enrico Garaldi , Adam Lidz , Kevin Lorinc , Jennifer Yik Ham Chan , Mark Vogelsberger

Eighteen candidates for emission line galaxies were discovered in a narrow-band infrared survey that targeted the redshifts of damped Lyman-alpha or metal lines in the spectra of quasars. The presence of emission lines is inferred from the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 F. Mannucci , D. Thompson , S. V. W. Beckwith , G. M. Williger

The reionization of hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) is a crucial landmark in the history of the universe, but the processes through which it occurs remain mysterious. In particular, recent numerical and analytic work suggest that…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 Steven Furlanetto , Lars Hernquist , Matias Zaldarriaga

The discovery of giant quasar Ly$\alpha$ nebulae at $z>2$ has opened up the possibility to directly study in emission the Circumgalactic and Intergalactic Medium (CGM/IGM). However, the resonant nature of the Ly$\alpha$ line and its…

We investigate the impact of quasars on the ionization of the surrounding intergalactic medium (IGM) with the radiative transfer code \texttt{CRASH4}, now accounting for X-rays and secondary electrons. After comparing with analytic…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2019-01-08 Luca Graziani , B. Ciardi , M. Glatzle

We investigate the possibility of constraining the ionization state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) close to the end of reionization (z ~ 6) by measuring the size of the HII regions in high-z quasars spectra. We perform a combination of…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 A. Maselli , S. Gallerani , A. Ferrara , T. R. Choudhury

Recently, Pello et al. (2004) claimed to have discovered a galaxy at a redshift z=10, and identified a feature in its spectrum with a hydrogen Lyman-alpha emission line. If this identification is correct, we show that the intergalactic…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 Abraham Loeb , Rennan Barkana , Lars Hernquist

The Lyman alpha absorption from intergalactic, once-ionized helium (HeII) has been measured with HST in four quasars over the last few years, over the redshift range 2.4 < z < 3.2. These observations have indicated that the HeII…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-31 Jordi Miralda-Escude

The red damping wing from neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium is a smoking-gun signal of ongoing reionization. One potential contaminant of the intergalactic damping wing signal is dense gas associated with foreground galaxies,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-12-13 Frederick B. Davies , Eduardo Bañados , Joseph F. Hennawi , Sarah E. I. Bosman

The distribution of diffuse gas in the intergalactic medium (IGM) imprints a series of hydrogen absorption lines on the spectra of distant background quasars known as the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest. Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2017-05-31 Alberto Rorai , Joseph F. Hennawi , Jose Oñorbe , Martin White , J. Xavier Prochaska , Girish Kulkarni , Michael Walther , Zarija Lukić , Khee-Gan Lee

We discuss expectations for the absorption of high-energy gamma-rays by gamma-gamma pair production with intergalactic radiation fields (IRFs) at very high redshifts (z~5-20), and the prospects thereof for probing the cosmic reionization…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-13 Susumu Inoue , Ruben Salvaterra , Tirthankar Roy Choudhury , Andrea Ferrara , Benedetta Ciardi , Raffaella Schneider

We present a new, high resolution HST/GHRS spectrum of quasar Q0302-003, and use the HeII Lyman-$\alpha$ absorption, together with a high resolution Keck spectrum of the HI Lyman-$\alpha$ forest, to probe the distribution and ionization…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-09-28 Craig J. Hogan , Scott F. Anderson , Martin H. Rugers

The inhomogeneous cosmological reionization process leaves tangible imprints in the intergalactic medium down to z=4-5. The Lyman-alpha forest flux power spectrum provides a potentially powerful probe of the epoch of reionization. With the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Renyue Cen , Patrick McDonald , Hy Trac , Abraham Loeb

Searches for Lyman-alpha emission lines are among the most effective ways to identify high-redshift galaxies. They are particularly interesting because they probe not only the galaxies themselves but also the ionization state of the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Steven R. Furlanetto , Matias Zaldarriaga , Lars Hernquist

We present a new flexible Bayesian framework for directly inferring the fraction of neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR, z~6-10) from detections and non-detections of Lyman Alpha…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2018-03-28 Charlotte A. Mason , Tommaso Treu , Mark Dijkstra , Andrei Mesinger , Michele Trenti , Laura Pentericci , Stephane de Barros , Eros Vanzella

The intergalactic medium (IGM) around quasars is shaped by their dense environments and by their excess ionizing radiation, forming a "quasar proximity zone" whose size and anisotropy depend on the quasar's halo mass, luminosity, age, and…

We use state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulations combined with a 1D radiative transfer code to assess the extent to which the highly ionized regions observed close to z~6 quasars, which we refer to as near-zones, can constrain the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 James S. Bolton , Martin G. Haehnelt

We present measurements of the mean and scatter of the IGM Lyman-{\alpha} opacity at 4.9 < z < 6.1 along the lines of sight of 62 quasars at z > 5.7, the largest sample assembled at these redshifts to date by a factor of two. The sample…

Observations of high-redshift quasars show that the IGM must have been reionized at some redshift $z>5$. If a source of radiation could be observed at the rest-frame Lya wavelength, at a sufficiently high redshift where some of the IGM in…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-09-28 Jordi Miralda-Escude