Work

The ionizing photon budget and effective clumping factor in radiative transfer simulations calibrated to Lyman-alpha forest data

Year: 2024

Type: preprint

Abstract: Recent JWST observations have allowed for the first time to obtain comprehensive measurements of the ionizing photon production efficiency $ξ_\text{ion} $ for a wide range of reionization-epoch galaxies. We explore implications for the inferred UV luminosity functions and escape fractions of ionizing sources in our suite of simulations. These are run with the GPU-based radiative transfer code ATON-HE and are calibrated to the XQR-30 Lyman-alpha forest data at $550$% at $z> 10$, disfavouring the oligarchic source model at very high redshift. The inferred effective clumping factors in our simulations are in the range of $3-6$, suggesting consistency between the observed ionizing properties of reionization-epoch galaxies and the ionizing photon budget in our simulations.

Source: arXiv (Cornell University)

DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2412.01906

Authors: Asthana, Shikhar, Kulkarni, Girish, Haehnelt, Martin G., Bolton, James S., Keating, Laura C., Simmonds, Charlotte

Institutions: University of Cambridge, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, University of Nottingham, University of Edinburgh

Language: English

Topic: Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara

OpenAlex ID: W4405035576

Cites:

Cited by: 3

Related to: 10