Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

The distribution of neutral hydrogen around high-redshift galaxies and quasars in the EAGLE simulation

Rahmati, A.; Schaye, J.; Bower, R.G.; Crain, R.A.; Furlong, M.; Schaller, M.; Theuns, T.

The distribution of neutral hydrogen around high-redshift galaxies and quasars in the EAGLE simulation Thumbnail


Authors

A. Rahmati

J. Schaye

R.G. Bower

R.A. Crain

M. Furlong

M. Schaller



Abstract

The observed high covering fractions of neutral hydrogen (HIHI) with column densities above ∼1017 cm−2 around Lyman-Break Galaxies (LBGs) and bright quasars at redshifts z ∼ 2–3 has been identified as a challenge for simulations of galaxy formation. We use the Evolution and Assembly of Galaxies and their Environment (EAGLE) cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation, which has been shown to reproduce a wide range of galaxy properties and for which the subgrid feedback was calibrated without considering gas properties, to study the distribution of HIHI around high-redshift galaxies. We predict the covering fractions of strong HIHI absorbers (NHI≳1017cm−2NHI≳1017cm−2) inside haloes to increase rapidly with redshift but to depend only weakly on halo mass. For massive (M200 ≳ 1012M⊙) haloes, the covering fraction profiles are nearly scale-invariant and we provide fitting functions that reproduce the simulation results. While efficient feedback is required to increase the HIHI covering fractions to the high observed values, the distribution of strong absorbers in and around haloes of a fixed mass is insensitive to factor of 2 variations in the strength of the stellar feedback. In contrast, at fixed stellar mass the predicted HIHI distribution is highly sensitive to the feedback efficiency. The fiducial EAGLE simulation reproduces both the observed global column density distribution function of HIHI and the observed radial covering fraction profiles of strong HIHI absorbers around LBGs and bright quasars.

Citation

Rahmati, A., Schaye, J., Bower, R., Crain, R., Furlong, M., Schaller, M., & Theuns, T. (2015). The distribution of neutral hydrogen around high-redshift galaxies and quasars in the EAGLE simulation. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 452(2), 2034-2056. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv1414

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 23, 2015
Publication Date Sep 11, 2015
Deposit Date Feb 10, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 452
Issue 2
Pages 2034-2056
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv1414
Keywords Methods: numerical, Galaxies: formation, Galaxies: high-redshift, Intergalactic medium, Quasars: absorption lines.

Files

Published Journal Article (3.7 Mb)
PDF

Copyright Statement
This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2015 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.





You might also like



Downloadable Citations