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Simulating MOS science on the ELT: Lyα forest tomography

Japelj, J.; Laigle, C.; Puech, M.; Pichon, C.; Rahmani, H.; Dubois, Y.; Devriendt, J.E.G.; Petitjean, P.; Hammer, F.; Gendron, E.; Kaper, L.; Morris, S.; Pirzkal, N.; Sánchez-Janssen, R.; Slyz, A.; Vergani, S.D.; Yang, Y.

Simulating MOS science on the ELT: Lyα forest tomography Thumbnail


Authors

J. Japelj

C. Laigle

M. Puech

C. Pichon

H. Rahmani

Y. Dubois

J.E.G. Devriendt

P. Petitjean

F. Hammer

E. Gendron

L. Kaper

N. Pirzkal

R. Sánchez-Janssen

A. Slyz

S.D. Vergani

Y. Yang



Abstract

Mapping the large-scale structure through cosmic time has numerous applications in studies of cosmology and galaxy evolution. At z ≳ 2, the structure can be traced by the neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) by way of observing the Lyα forest towards densely sampled lines of sight of bright background sources, such as quasars and star-forming galaxies. We investigate the scientific potential of MOSAIC, a planned multi-object spectrograph on the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), for the 3D mapping of the IGM at z ≳ 3. We simulated a survey of 3 ≲ z ≲ 4 galaxies down to a limiting magnitude of mr ∼ 25.5 mag in an area of 1 degree2 in the sky. Galaxies and their spectra (including the line-of-sight Lyα absorption) were taken from the lightcone extracted from the Horizon-AGN cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. The quality of the reconstruction of the original density field was studied for different spectral resolutions (R = 1000 and R = 2000, corresponding to the transverse typical scales of 2.5 and 4 Mpc) and signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) of the spectra. We demonstrate that the minimum S/N (per resolution element) of the faintest galaxies that a survey like this has to reach is S/N = 4. We show that a survey with this sensitivity enables a robust extraction of cosmic filaments and the detection of the theoretically predicted galaxy stellar mass and star-formation rate gradients towards filaments. By simulating the realistic performance of MOSAIC, we obtain S/N(Tobs, R, mr) scaling relations. We estimate that ≲35 (65) nights of observation time are required to carry out the survey with the instrument’s high multiplex mode and with a spectral resolution of R = 1000 (2000). A survey with a MOSAIC-concept instrument on the ELT is found to enable the mapping of the IGM at z >  3 on Mpc scales, and as such will be complementary to and competitive with other planned IGM tomography surveys.

Citation

Japelj, J., Laigle, C., Puech, M., Pichon, C., Rahmani, H., Dubois, Y., …Yang, Y. (2019). Simulating MOS science on the ELT: Lyα forest tomography. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 632, https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201936048

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Oct 30, 2019
Online Publication Date Dec 9, 2019
Publication Date Dec 31, 2019
Deposit Date Jan 3, 2020
Publicly Available Date Jan 3, 2020
Journal Astronomy and astrophysics.
Print ISSN 0004-6361
Electronic ISSN 1432-0746
Publisher EDP Sciences
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 632
DOI https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201936048

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Copyright Statement
Japelj, J., Laigle, C., Puech, M., Pichon, C., Rahmani, H., Dubois, Y., Devriendt, J. E. G., Petitjean, P., Hammer, F., Gendron, E., Kaper, L., Morris, S., Pirzkal, N., Sánchez-Janssen, R., Slyz, A., Vergani, S. D. & Yang, Y. (2019). Simulating MOS science on the ELT: Lyα forest tomography. Astronomy & Astrophysics 632: A94, reproduced with permission, © ESO.





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