MUSE WATSON 2020 LICENSE

The IGM has mainly been explored over the past decades using absorption line spectroscopy, which provides a powerful way to trace the neutral hydrogen observed in Lyman-alpha (Ly α) absorption against bright background quasars ( Gunn & Peterson 1965 Meiksin 2009). This complex interplay between the infall of gas from filaments through the CGM and the ejection of matter from the feedback processes is expected to play a key role in the regulation of galaxy growth through cosmic time. These filaments feed the circumgalactic medium (CGM), the gaseous component that is responsible for regulating the gas exchange between galaxies and the surrounding IGM (e.g., Tumlinson et al. The current paradigm of structure formation predicts that most of the gas in the intergalactic medium (IGM) is organized in a “cosmic web” composed of nonuniform gaseous filaments connecting galaxies on scales of megaparsecs (e.g., White et al.

MUSE WATSON 2020 LICENSE

Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. These observations provide the first detection of the cosmic web in Ly α emission in typical filamentary environments and the first observational clue indicating the existence of a large population of ultra low-luminosity Ly α emitters at high redshift. If these Ly α emitters are powered by star formation, then this implies their luminosity function needs to extend down to star formation rates < 10 −4 M ⊙ yr −1.

We find that the bulk of this diffuse emission can be reproduced by the unresolved Ly α emission of a large population of ultra low-luminosity Ly α emitters (< 10 40 erg s −1), provided that the faint end of the Ly α luminosity function is steep ( α ⪅ −1.8), it extends down to luminosities lower than 10 38 − 10 37 erg s −1, and the clustering of these Ly α emitters is significant (filling factor < 1/6). Fluorescent Ly α emission powered by the cosmic UV background can only account for less than 34% of this emission at z ≈ 3 and for not more than 10% at higher redshift. Remarkably, 70% of the total Ly α luminosity from these filaments comes from beyond the circumgalactic medium of any identified Ly α emitter. Among the 22 overdense regions identified, five are likely to harbor very extended Ly α emission at high significance with an average surface brightness of 5 × 10 −20 erg s −1 cm −2 arcsec −2. These structures have been observed in overdensities of Ly α emitters in the MUSE Extremely Deep Field, a 140 h deep MUSE observation located in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. We report the discovery of diffuse extended Ly α emission from redshift 3.1 to 4.5, tracing cosmic web filaments on scales of 2.5−4 cMpc. Alonso de Córdova 3107, 763 0355 Vitacura, Santiago, Chile Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, ItalyĮuropean Southern Observatory, Av. INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Via P. 27, 8093 Zurich, SwitzerlandĬentre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC 3122, Australia Institut für Astrophysik, Universität Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, GermanyĮTH Zurich, Institute of Astronomy, Wolfgang-Pauli-Str. IRAP, Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, CNRS, Université de Toulouse, 14 avenue Edouard Belin, 31400 Toulouse, FranceĪix Marseille Université, CNRS, LAM (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille) UMR 7326, 13388 Marseille, France Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto, CAUP, Rua das Estrelas, 4150-762 Porto, Portugal Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab, Casilla 603, La Serena, Chile Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany

Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands

des Maillettes, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland Observatoire de Genève, Université de Genève, 51 Ch. Lyon1, ENS de Lyon, CNRS, Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon UMR5574, 69230 Saint-Genis-Laval, FranceĮ-mail: Lagrange, CNRS, Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CS 34229, 06304 Nice, France Astronomical objects: linking to databases.Including author names using non-Roman alphabets.Suggested resources for more tips on language editing in the sciences Punctuation and style concerns regarding equations, figures, tables, and footnotes

Muse watson 2020