Journal article
JADES: the emergence and evolution of Lyα emission and constraints on the intergalactic medium neutral fraction
- Abstract:
- The rest-frame UV recombination emission line Lyα can be powered by ionising photons from young massive stars in star-forming galaxies, but the fact that it can be resonantly scattered by neutral gas complicates its interpretation. For reionisation-era galaxies, a neutral intergalactic medium will scatter Lyα from the line of sight, making Lyα a useful probe of the neutral fraction evolution. Here, we explore Lyα in JWST/NIRSpec spectra from the ongoing JADES programme, which targets hundreds of galaxies in the well-studied GOODS-S and GOODS-N fields. These sources are UV-faint (−20.4 < MUV < −16.4) and thus represent a poorly explored class of galaxy. We fitted the low spectral resolution spectra (R ∼ 100) of a subset of 84 galaxies in GOODS-S with zspec > 5.6 (as derived with optical lines) with line and continuum models to search for significant line emission. Through exploration of the R100 data, we find evidence for Lyα in 17 sources. This sample allowed us to place observational constraints on the fraction of galaxies with Lyα emission in the redshift range 5.6 < z < 7.5, with a decrease from z = 6 to z = 7. We also find a positive correlation between the Lyα equivalent width and MUV, as seen in other samples. We used these results to estimate the neutral gas fraction at z ∼ 7, and our estimates are in agreement with previous results (XHI ∼ 0.5 − 0.9).
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1051/0004-6361/202347099
Authors
+ European Commission
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/00k4n6c32
- Grant:
- 789056
+ European Research Council
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/0472cxd90
- Grant:
- 695671
+ Science and Technology Facilities Council
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/057g20z61
- Publisher:
- EDP Sciences
- Journal:
- Astronomy & Astrophysics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 683
- Article number:
- A238
- Publication date:
- 2024-03-24
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-12-20
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1432-0746
- ISSN:
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0004-6361
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1602244
- Local pid:
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pubs:1602244
- Deposit date:
-
2024-01-17
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Jones et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © The Authors 2024. Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This article is published in open access under the Subscribe to Open model.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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