Journal article
The great escape: understanding the connection between Ly α emission and LyC escape in simulated JWST analogues
- Abstract:
- Constraining the escape fraction of Lyman Continuum (LyC) photons from high-redshift galaxies is crucial to understanding reionization. Recent observations have demonstrated that various characteristics of the Ly α emission line correlate with the inferred LyC escape fraction (f LyC esc ) of low-redshift galaxies. Using a data set of 9600 mock Ly α spectra of star-forming galaxies at 4.64 ≤ z ≤ 6 from the SPHINX20 cosmological radiation hydrodynamical simulation, we study the physics controlling the escape of Ly α and LyC photons. We find that our mock Ly α observations are representative of high-redshift observations and that typical observational methods tend to overpredict the Ly α escape fraction (f Ly α esc ) by as much as 2 dex. We investigate the correlations between f LyC esc and f Ly α esc , Ly α equivalent width (Wλ(Ly α)), peak separation (vsep), central escape fraction (fcen), and red peak asymmetry (Ared f ). We find that f Ly α esc and fcen are good diagnostics for LyC leakage, selecting for galaxies with lower neutral gas densities and less UV attenuation that have recently experienced supernova feedback. In contrast, Wλ(Ly α) and vsep are found to be necessary but insufficient diagnostics, while Ared f carries little information. Finally, we use stacks of Ly α, H α, and F150W mock surface brightness profiles to find that galaxies with high f LyC esc tend to have less extended Ly α and F150W haloes but larger H α haloes than their non-leaking counterparts. This confirms that Ly α spectral profiles and surface brightness morphology can be used to better understand the escape of LyC photons from galaxies during the epoch of reionization.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 5.4MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1093/mnras/stae1586
Authors
+ National Research Foundation of Korea
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/013aysd81
- Funding agency for:
- Kimm, T
- Grant:
- 2020R1C1C1007079
- 2022R1A6A1A03053472
+ University of Oxford
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/052gg0110
- Funding agency for:
- Katz, H
- Programme:
- Beecroft Fellowship
+ Science and Technology Facilities Council
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/057g20z61
- Funding agency for:
- Choustikov, N
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Journal:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society More from this journal
- Volume:
- 532
- Issue:
- 2
- Pages:
- 2463–2484
- Publication date:
- 2024-07-10
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-06-19
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1365-2966
- ISSN:
-
0035-8711
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2016189
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2016189
- Deposit date:
-
2024-09-12
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Choustikov et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record