An official website of the United States government
Abstract Measuring the density of the intergalactic medium using quasar sight lines in the epoch of reionization is challenging due to the saturation of Ly α absorption. Near a luminous quasar, however, the enhanced radiation creates a proximity zone observable in the quasar spectra where the Ly α absorption is not saturated. In this study, we use 10 high-resolution ( R ≳ 10,000) z ∼ 6 quasar spectra from the extended XQR-30 sample to measure the density field in the quasar proximity zones. We find a variety of environments within 3 pMpc distance from the quasars. We compare the observed density cumulative distribution function (CDF) with models from the Cosmic Reionization on Computers simulation and find a good agreement between 1.5 and 3 pMpc from the quasar. This region is far away from the quasar hosts and hence approaching the mean density of the universe, which allows us to use the CDF to set constraints on the cosmological parameter σ 8 = 0.6 ± 0.3. The uncertainty is mainly due to the limited number of high-quality quasar sight lines currently available. Utilizing the more than 200 known quasars at z ≳ 6, this method will allow us to tighten the constraint on σ 8 to the percent level in the future. In the region closer to the quasar within 1.5 pMpc, we find that the density is higher than predicted in the simulation by 1.23 ± 0.17, suggesting that the typical host dark matter halo mass of a bright quasar ( M 1450 < −26.5) at z ∼ 6 is log 10 ( M h / M ⊙ ) = 12.5 − 0.7 + 0.4 .
more »
« less
Time-dependent behaviour of quasar proximity zones at z ∼ 6
ABSTRACT Since the discovery of z ∼ 6 quasars two decades ago, studies of their Ly α-transparent proximity zones have largely focused on their utility as a probe of cosmic reionization. But even when in a highly ionized intergalactic medium, these zones provide a rich laboratory for determining the time-scales that govern quasar activity and the concomitant growth of their supermassive black holes. In this work, we use a suite of 1D radiative transfer simulations of quasar proximity zones to explore their time-dependent behaviour for activity time-scales from ∼103 to 108 yr. The sizes of the simulated proximity zones, as quantified by the distance at which the smoothed Ly α transmission drops below 10 per cent (denoted Rp), are in excellent agreement with observations, with the exception of a handful of particularly small zones that have been attributed to extremely short ≲104 lifetimes. We develop a physically motivated semi-analytic model of proximity zones which captures the bulk of their equilibrium and non-equilibrium behaviour, and use this model to investigate how quasar variability on ≲105 yr time-scales is imprinted on the distribution of observed proximity zone sizes. We show that large variations in the ionizing luminosity of quasars on time-scales of ≲104 yr are disfavoured based on the good agreement between the observed distribution of Rp and our model prediction based on ‘lightbulb’ (i.e. steady constant emission) light curves.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1816006
- PAR ID:
- 10188681
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Volume:
- 493
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0035-8711
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1330 to 1343
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
ABSTRACT Proximity zones of high-redshift quasars are unique probes of their central supermassive black holes as well as the intergalactic medium (IGM) in the last stages of reionization. We present 22 new measurements of proximity zones of quasars with redshifts between 5.8 and 6.6, using the enlarged XQR-30 sample of high-resolution, high-SNR quasar spectra. The quasars in our sample have ultraviolet magnitudes of M1450 ∼ −27 and black hole masses of 109–1010 M⊙. Our inferred proximity zone sizes are 2–7 physical Mpc, with a typical uncertainty of less than 0.5 physical Mpc, which, for the first time, also includes uncertainty in the quasar continuum. We find that the correlation between proximity zone sizes and the quasar redshift, luminosity, or black hole mass, indicates a large diversity of quasar lifetimes. Two of our proximity zone sizes are exceptionally small. The spectrum of one of these quasars, with z = 6.02, displays, unusually for this redshift, damping wing absorption without any detectable metal lines, which could potentially originate from the IGM. The other quasar has a high-ionization absorber ∼0.5 pMpc from the edge of the proximity zone. This work increases the number of proximity zone measurements available in the last stages of cosmic reionization to 87. This data will lead to better constraints on quasar lifetimes and obscuration fractions at high redshift, that in turn will help probe the seed mass and formation redshift of supermassive black holes.more » « less
-
Abstract Based on Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 16, we have detected the large-scale structure of Ly α emission in the universe at redshifts z = 2–3.5 by cross-correlating quasar positions and Ly α emission imprinted in the residual spectra of luminous red galaxies. We apply an analytical model to fit the corresponding Ly α surface brightness profile and multipoles of the redshift-space quasar–Ly α emission cross-correlation function. The model suggests an average cosmic Ly α luminosity density of 6.6 − 3.1 + 3.3 × 10 40 erg s − 1 cMpc − 3 , a ∼2 σ detection with a median value about 8–9 times those estimated from deep narrowband surveys of Ly α emitters at similar redshifts. Although the low signal-to-noise ratio prevents us from a significant detection of the Ly α forest–Ly α emission cross-correlation, the measurement is consistent with the prediction of our best-fit model from quasar–Ly α emission cross-correlation within current uncertainties. We rule out the scenario where the Ly α photons mainly originate from quasars. We find that Ly α emission from star-forming galaxies, including contributions from that concentrated around the galaxy centers and that in diffuse Ly α -emitting halos, is able to explain the bulk of the Ly α luminosity density inferred from our measurements. Ongoing and future surveys can further improve the measurements and advance our understanding of the cosmic Ly α emission field.more » « less
-
ABSTRACT The presence of excess scatter in the Ly-α forest at z ∼ 5.5, together with the existence of sporadic extended opaque Gunn-Peterson troughs, has started to provide robust evidence for a late end of hydrogen reionization. However, low data quality and systematic uncertainties complicate the use of Ly-α transmission as a precision probe of reionization’s end stages. In this paper, we assemble a sample of 67 quasar sightlines at z > 5.5 with high signal-to-noise ratios of >10 per ≤15 km s−1 spectral pixel, relying largely on the new XQR-30 quasar sample. XQR-30 is a large program on VLT/X-Shooter which obtained deep (SNR > 20 per pixel) spectra of 30 quasars at z > 5.7. We carefully account for systematics in continuum reconstruction, instrumentation, and contamination by damped Ly-α systems. We present improved measurements of the mean Ly-α transmission over 4.9 < z < 6.1. Using all known systematics in a forward modelling analysis, we find excellent agreement between the observed Ly-α transmission distributions and the homogeneous-UVB simulations Sherwood and Nyx up to z ≤ 5.2 (<1σ), and mild tension (∼2.5σ) at z = 5.3. Homogeneous UVB models are ruled out by excess Ly-α transmission scatter at z ≥ 5.4 with high confidence (>3.5σ). Our results indicate that reionization-related fluctuations, whether in the UVB, residual neutral hydrogen fraction, and/or IGM temperature, persist in the intergalactic medium until at least z = 5.3 (t = 1.1 Gyr after the big bang). This is further evidence for a late end to reionization.more » « less
-
Abstract The absorption by neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) produces the Ly α forest in the spectra of quasars. The Ly α forest absorbers have a broad distribution of neutral hydrogen column density N H I and Doppler b parameter. The narrowest Ly α absorption lines (of lowest b ) with neutral hydrogen column density above ∼10 13 cm −2 are dominated by thermal broadening, which can be used to constrain the thermal state of the IGM. Here we constrain the temperature-density relation T = T 0 ( ρ / ρ ¯ ) γ − 1 of the IGM at 1.6 < z < 3.6 by using N H I and b parameters measured from 24 high-resolution and high-signal-to-noise quasar spectra and by employing an analytic model to model the N H I -dependent low- b cutoff in the b distribution. In each N H I bin, the b cutoff is estimated using two methods, one non-parametric method from computing the cumulative b distribution and a parametric method from fitting the full b distribution. We find that the IGM temperature T 0 at the mean gas density ρ ¯ shows a peak of ∼1.5 × 10 4 K at z ∼ 2.7–2.9. At redshift higher than this, the index γ approximately remains constant, and it starts to increase toward lower redshifts. The evolution in both parameters is in good agreement with constraints from completely different approaches, which signals that He ii reionization completes around z ∼ 3.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz3303
