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Title: Detection of z ~ 2.3 Cosmic Voids from 3D Ly α Forest Tomography in the COSMOS Field

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [2]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [6];  [7];  [8]; ORCiD logo [9];  [10]; ORCiD logo [11];  [7]
  1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  3. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  4. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
  5. Google Inc., Moutain View, CA (United States)
  6. Space Telescope Science Inst., Baltimore, MD (United States)
  7. Aix-Marseille Univ., and CNRS/IN2P3, Marseille (France)
  8. Aix-Marseille Univ., and CNRS/IN2P3, Marseille (France); Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
  9. Univ. of Vienna (Austria)
  10. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
  11. Max Planck Inst. fur Extraterrestrische Physik, Garching (Germany)

We present the most distant detection of cosmic voids (z ~ 2.3) and the first detection of three-dimensional voids in the Lyα forest. We used a 3D tomographic map of the absorption with an effective comoving spatial resolution of 2.5 h-1 Mpc and a volume of 3.15 × 105 h3 Mpc3, which was reconstructed from moderate-resolution Keck I/LRIS spectra of 240 background Lyman-break galaxies and quasars in a 0.16 deg2 footprint in the COSMOS field. Voids were detected using a spherical overdensity finder calibrated from hydrodynamical simulations of the intergalactic medium (IGM). This allows us to identify voids in the IGM corresponding to voids in the underlying matter density field, yielding a consistent volume fraction of voids in both data (19.5%) and simulations (18.2%). We fit excursion set models to the void radius function and compare the radially averaged stacked profiles of large voids (r > 5 h-1 Mpc) to stacked voids in mock observations and the simulated density field. Comparing with 432 coeval galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts in the same volume as the tomographic map, we find that the tomography-identified voids are underdense in galaxies by 5.95σ compared to random cells.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP) (SC-25); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1526532
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1594744
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Journal Name: The Astrophysical Journal (Online) Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 861; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Simulating MOS science on the ELT: Ly α forest tomography journal December 2019
First Data Release of the COSMOS Ly α Mapping and Tomography Observations: 3D Ly α Forest Tomography at 2.05 < z < 2.55 journal August 2018
TARDIS. I. A Constrained Reconstruction Approach to Modeling the z ∼ 2.5 Cosmic Web Probed by Ly α Forest Tomography journal December 2019
Three- and two-point spatial correlations of intergalactic medium at $z\sim 2$ using projected quasar triplets text January 2019
Three- and two-point spatial correlations of intergalactic medium at z ∼ 2 using projected quasar triplets journal October 2019
Searching for the shadows of giants: characterizing protoclusters with line of sight Lyman-α absorption journal September 2019
Mapping Quasar Light Echoes in 3D with Ly α Forest Tomography journal September 2019
Dark Energy Survey year 1 results: the relationship between mass and light around cosmic voids journal October 2019
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: The relationship between mass and light around cosmic voids text January 2019