Related papers: Explaining the Lyman-alpha forest
Cosmological simulations with gas dynamics suggest that the Lyman-alpha forest is produced mainly by "small scale structure" --- filaments and sheets that are the high redshift analog of today's galaxy superclusters. There is no sharp…
The intergalactic neutral hydrogen which is responsible for the Lyman alpha forest of quasar absorption is a tracer of much larger amounts of ionised hydrogen. The ionised component has yet to be detected directly, but is expected to…
We discuss the effects of gravitational collapse on the shape of absorption line profiles for low column density (log N(HI) < 14) Lyman Alpha forest clouds and argue by comparison with cosmological simulations that Lyman alpha forest…
We propose that cooling outflows from star-forming dwarf galaxies that are spatially correlated with but unbound to bright galaxies may account for the low column QSO Ly$\alpha$ forests, providing an explanation for both the heavy elements…
(Abridged) Numerical simulations indicate that the intergalactic medium (IGM) responsible for the low column density Lyman-alpha forest follows a well defined temperature-density relation. We demonstrate that such an equation of state…
Simulations of large-scale structure formation predict the formation of sheet- and filamentary structures, which are often invoked as the origin of the Lyman-alpha forest. In their simplest description, these sheets and filaments require a…
We develop a prescription for characterizing the strengths of metal lines associated with Lyman-alpha forest absorbers (LYFAs) of a given neutral hydrogen column density N_HI and metallicity [Fe/H]. This Line Observability Index (LOX) is…
Observations of the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest in distant quasar spectra with upcoming surveys are expected to provide significantly larger and higher-quality datasets. To interpret these datasets, it is imperative to develop efficient…
The Lyman alpha forest power spectrum has been measured on large scales by the BOSS survey in SDSS-III at $z\sim 2.3$, has been shown to agree well with linear theory predictions, and has provided the first measurement of Baryon Acoustic…
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…
We study the galaxy number density (smoothed on a 5h^{-1} Mpc scale) around 18 low-redshift Lyman-alpha absorbers previously observed with HST. The absorbers lie in the foregrounds of Mrk 335, Mrk 421, Mrk 501, I Zw 1, and 3C 273, all…
We report a quantitative study of the escape of Lyman-alpha photons from an inhomogeneous optically thick medium that mimics the structure of damped Lyman-alpha absorbers. Modeling the optically thick disk with 3 components (massive stars…
The Lyman-alpha forest is the large-scale structure probe for which we appear to have modeling control to the highest wavenumbers. This makes the Lyman-alpha forest of great interest for constraining the warmness/fuzziness of dark matter…
The comparison of quasar absorption spectra with numerically simulated spectra from hierarchical cosmological models of structure formation promises to be a valuable tool to discriminate among these models. We present simulation results for…
We present a search for spatial and redshift correlations in a 2 A resolution spectroscopic survey of the Lyman alpha forest at 2.15 < z < 3.37 toward ten QSOs concentrated within a 1-degree diameter field. We find a signal at 2.7 sigma…
Numerical hydrodynamical simulations are used to predict the expected absorption properties of the Lyman-Alpha forest for a variety of Cold Dark Matter dominated cosmological scenarios: CHDM, OCDM, LCDM, SCDM, and tCDM. Synthetic spectra…
A scenario is explored in which Lyman alpha absorbers at low redshift arise from lines of sight through extended galaxy disks, including those of dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies. A population of galaxies is simulated based upon…
Spectra of high redshift QSOs show deep Gunn-Peterson absorptions on the blue sides of the \Lya emissions lines. They can be decomposed into components called \Lya leaks, defined to be emissive regions in complementary to otherwise…
Estimates of the metagalactic hydrogen ionization rate from the Lyman-alpha forest opacity in QSO absorption spectra depend on the complex density distribution of neutral hydrogen along the line-of-sight. We use a large suite of high…
The hydrogen Ly$\alpha$ forest is an important probe of the $z>2$ Universe that is otherwise challenging to observe with galaxy redshift surveys, but this technique has traditionally been limited to 1D studies in front of bright quasars.…