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Related papers: The Lyman-alpha Forest as a Cosmological Tool

200 papers

We present a novel technique for calculating \Lya forest correlations based on cell counts. It is applied to the line lists from 7 QSOs observed at high resolution ($\Delta v<25\kms$). Two spectra (Q0055$-$259 and Q0014$+$813) appear to be…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 François R. Bouchet , Avery Meiksin

We derive and numerically implement an algorithm for estimating the 3D power spectrum of the Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly-$\alpha$) forest flux fluctuations. The algorithm exploits the unique geometry of Ly-$\alpha$ forest data to efficiently measure…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2018-01-10 Andreu Font-Ribera , Patrick McDonald , Anže Slosar

The classic question regarding Lyman-alpha forest clouds is whether they are confined by the pressure of a hot, diffuse surrounding medium, or by the gravity of dark matter mini-halos. This paper reviews these basic models for forest…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-08-30 Jane C. Charlton

We present an effective field theory (EFT) approach to extract fundamental cosmological parameters from the Lyman-alpha forest flux fluctuations as an alternative to the standard simulation-based techniques. As a first application, we…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-02-21 Mikhail M. Ivanov , Michael W. Toomey , Naim Göksel Karaçaylı

(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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-06 M. Viel , S. Matarrese , H. J. Mo , M. G. Haehnelt , Tom Theuns

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.…

[abridged] Among the different observational techniques used to select high-redshift galaxies, the hydrogen recombination line Lyman-alpha (Lya) is of particular interest as it gives access to the measurement of cosmological quantities such…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-17 Hakim Atek , Daniel Kunth , Daniel Schaerer , J. Miguel Mas-Hesse , Matthew Hayes , Goran Ostlin , Jean-Paul Kneib , .

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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 Rupert A. C. Croft , A. J. Banday , Lars Hernquist

The Lyman alpha emission line is an essential diagnostic tool for probing galaxy formation and evolution. Not only is it commonly the strongest observable line from high-redshift galaxies but from its shape detailed information about its…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-13 Peter Laursen , Jesper Sommer-Larsen , Anja C. Andersen

Recent studies have focused on the low-$z$ Ly$\alpha$ forest as a potential constraint on galactic feedback, as different AGN and stellar feedback models in hydrodynamic simulations produce varying intergalactic medium (IGM) statistics.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-08-26 Megan T. Tillman , Joseph N. Burchett , Blakesley Burkhart , Vikram Khaire , Sanchayeeta Borthakur

The ultralight dark photon is a well-motivated, hypothetical dark matter candidate. In a dilute plasma, they can resonantly convert into photons, and heat up the intergalactic medium between galaxies. In this work, we explore the dark…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-04-04 Andrea Trost , James S. Bolton , Andrea Caputo , Hongwan Liu , Stefano Cristiani , Matteo Viel

Observations of the Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) forest from spectroscopic surveys such as BOSS/eBOSS, or the ongoing DESI, offer a unique window to study the growth of structure on megaparsec scales. Interpretation of these measurements is…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2023-05-09 Christian Pedersen , Andreu Font-Ribera , Nickolay Y. Gnedin

We demonstrate a method for reconstructing the weak lensing potential from the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest data. We derive an optimal estimator for the lensing potential on the sky based on the correlation between pixels in real space. This…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2020-10-21 R. Benton Metcalf , Nicolas Tessore , Rupert A. C. Croft

We investigate Lyman-alpha forest flux statistics in mixed fuzzy dark matter (FDM) and cold dark matter (CDM) cosmologies using the Fluctuating Gunn-Peterson Approximation (FGPA) applied to hybrid Schr\"odinger-Poisson and N-body…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-08 Yourong Frank Wang

We present a new method of finding cosmic voids using tomographic maps of Ly{\alpha} forest flux. We identify cosmological voids with radii of 2 - 12 $h^{-1}$Mpc in a large N-body simulation at $z = 2.5$, and characterize the signal of the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2017-03-15 Casey W. Stark , Andreu Font-Ribera , Martin White , Khee-Gan Lee

We study the distribution of low-redshift Ly$\alpha$ clouds in a CDM model using numerical simulations including photoionization and cooling of the baryonic component. The ionizing background is found to be efficient enough to keep most of…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-08-30 Patrick Petitjean , Jan P. Mücket , Ron Kates

The 3D distribution of matter at small scales encodes valuable information about the nature of dark matter and other fundamental physics. A prominent probe of such scales outside galaxies is the Lyman-alpha forest, which studies absorption…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-05-21 Ivan Ridkokasha , Andres Aramburo-Garcia , Kyrylo Bondarenko , Anastasia Sokolenko , Matthieu Schaller , Alexey Boyarsky

We study the properties of self-shielding intergalactic absorption systems and their implications for the ionizing background. We find that cosmological simulations post-processed with detailed radiative transfer calculations generally are…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2011-12-14 Matthew McQuinn , S. Peng Oh , C. -A. Faucher-Giguere

Recent hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation reveal streams of cold (T ~ 1e4 K) gas flowing into the centers of dark matter halos as massive as 1e12-1e13.5 M_sun at redshifts z~1-3. In this paper we show that if > 20% of the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-13 Mark Dijkstra , Abraham Loeb