Luminosity Functions of Lyα Emitters at Redshifts z = 6.5 and z = 5.7: Evidence against Reionization at z ≤ 6.5

By S. Malhotra, J. Rhoads. 2004

164 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The visibility of Lyα emission from galaxies should be suppressed substantially by a neutral intergalactic medium before reionization. Even after taking into account a local H II region produced by the galaxy and a velocity offset of Lyα, a factor of 3 attenuation in the line is unavoidable. We rule out such a suppression by comparing line luminosity functions of Lyα emitters at z = 6.5 and 5.7. The luminosity functions at z = 5.7 and z = 6.5 were constructed using published surveys over a range of depths and volumes. They constrain both characteristic luminosity L* and density ϕ*. The luminosity functions at the two redshifts are statistically consistent with one another, and only one survey lies substantially off the luminosity function. We conclude that reionization was largely complete at z ≈ 6.5.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/12604c12a0cd0a2229cfadf3b0354f0745d440ed

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. M. Ouchi
2. Richard S. Ellis
3. P. Oesch
4. R. Bouwens
5. G. Illingworth
6. M. Trenti
7. M. Dijkstra
8. Yoshiaki Ono

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. M. Dijkstra
2. Daniel Schaerer
3. M. Ouchi
4. P. Oesch
5. N. Kashikawa
6. L. Pentericci
7. E. Vanzella
8. R. Bouwens

Citations in the corpus

• REIONIZATION AFTER PLANCK: THE DERIVED GROWTH OF THE COSMIC IONIZING EMISSIVITY NOW MATCHES THE GROWTH OF THE GALAXY UV LUMINOSITY DENSITY (2015, methodology): “…from these trends are due to an increasingly neutral IGM at z ∼ 7–8, one can use this technique to quantify the filling factor of ionized hydrogen at z ∼ 6.5–8 (Malhotra & Rhoads 2004; Santos 2004; McQuinn et al. 2007; Mesinger & Furlanetto 2008; Fontana et al. 2010; Stark et al. 2010, 2011;…”
• Reionization and Galaxy Evolution Probed by z = 7 Lyα Emitters (2007, background): “For the earlier epoch, Malhotra & Rhoads (2004) suggest that Lyα LF does not evolve between z = 5.7 and 6.6.”
• EVIDENCE FOR PopIII-LIKE STELLAR POPULATIONS IN THE MOST LUMINOUS Lyα EMITTERS AT THE EPOCH OF REIONIZATION: SPECTROSCOPIC CONFIRMATION (2015, background): “Narrow-band searches have been successful in detecting and confirming Lyα emitters at z ∼ 3 − 7 (e.g. Cowie & Hu 1998; Malhotra & Rhoads 2004; Iye et al. 2006; Murayama et al. 2007; Hu et al. 2010; Ouchi et al. 2010).”
• SILVERRUSH. IV. Lyα luminosity functions at z = 5.7 and 6.6 studied with ∼1300 Lyα emitters on the 14–21 deg2 sky (2017, background): “Ouchi et al. (2010) have constrained xHI = 0.2± 0.2 at z = 6.6 from the Lyα LF evolution at z=5.7−6.6 (see also Malhotra & Rhoads 2004; Kashikawa et al. 2006).”
• The Universe Is Reionizing at z ∼ 7: Bayesian Inference of the IGM Neutral Fraction Using Lyα Emission from Galaxies (2017, background): “Into the EoR, a powerful probe of the IGM is the Lyman alpha (Lyα, 1216Å) emission line from galaxies, which is strongly attenuated by neutral hydrogen (Haiman & Spaans 1999; Malhotra & Rhoads 2004; Santos 2004; Verhamme et al. 2006; McQuinn et al. 2007a; Dijkstra 2014).”
• Hyper-Eddington accretion flows on to massive black holes (2015, background): “Among highz galaxies, Lyα emitters (LAE) have prominent Lyα emission, typically LLyα ∼ 1042−44 erg s−1 (Ouchi et al. 2003; Hu et al. 2004; Malhotra & Rhoads 2004; Kashikawa et al. 2006; Shimasaku et al. 2006; Ouchi et al. 2008, 2010; Ono et al. 2010, 2012).”
• Lyα Emitting Galaxies as a Probe of Reionisation (2014, background): “…et al. 2002; Hui & Haiman 2003; Raskutti et al. 2012), observations of the Lyα damping wing in gammaray burst after-glow spectra (Totani et al. 2006; McQuinn et al. 2008), and Lyα emitting galaxies (e.g. Haiman & Spaans 1999; Malhotra & Rhoads 2004; Haiman & Cen 2005; Kashikawa et al. 2006).”
• Systematic Identification of LAEs for Visible Exploration and Reionization Research Using Subaru HSC (SILVERRUSH). I. Program strategy and clustering properties of ∼2000 Lyα emitters at z = 6–7 over the 0.3–0.5 Gpc2 survey area (2017, background): “…et al. 2011; Bolton et al. 2011), gamma-ray bursts (GRBs; Totani et al. 2006, 2014, 2016; see also Greiner et al. 2009), and galaxies including LAEs (Malhotra & Rhoads 2004; Ouchi et al. 2010; Ota et al. 2010; Kashikawa et al. 2011; Pentericci et al. 2011; Ono et al. 2012; Treu et al. 2013;…”
• The End of the Reionization Epoch Probed by Lyα Emitters at z = 6.5 in the Subaru Deep Field (2006, background): “Malhotra & Rhoads (2004) and Stern et al. (2005) found no significant evolution of the LF between z = 5.7 and 6.5, implying that the neutral fraction of the universe is already low at z = 6.5.”
• Lyα Emitters at z = 5.7 in the Subaru Deep Field (2006, methodology): “The dotdashed line denotes the LF given in Malhotra & Rhoads (2004) derived from a fit of the Schechter function to a compiled data set, including Rhoads & Malhotra (2001), Hu et al. (2004), and Ajiki et al. (2004).”
• Identification of the brightest Lyα emitters at z = 6.6 : Implications for the evolution of the luminosity function in the reionization era (2015, background): “…have now been established from z ∼ 2 − 7 through narrow-band surveys (e.g. Cowie & Hu 1998; Rhoads et al. 2000; Fynbo et al. 2001; Rhoads et al. 2003; Malhotra & Rhoads 2004; Taniguchi et al. 2005; Shimasaku et al. 2006; Westra et al. 2006; Nilsson et al. 2007; Ouchi et al. 2008, 2010; Hu et al.…”
• Model-independent evidence in favour of an end to reionization by z ≈ 6 (2014, background): “…McQuinn et al. 2008; Bolton et al. 2011; Schroeder et al. 2012; Totani et al. 2013); (iii) the number density and clustering of Lyα emitters (e.g. Malhotra & Rhoads 2004; Kashikawa et al. 2006; McQuinn et al. 2007; Dijkstra et al. 2011; Dayal et al. 2011; Jensen et al. 2013; Konno et al. 2014;…”