IGM Constraints from the SDSS-III/BOSS DR9 Ly-alpha Forest Flux Probability Distribution Function

Abstract

The Ly$\alpha$ forest transmission probability distribution function (PDF) is an established probe of the intergalactic medium (IGM) astrophysics, especially the temperature-density relationship of the IGM. We measure the transmission PDF from 3393 Baryon Oscillations Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) quasars from SDSS Data Release 9, and compare with mock spectra that include careful modeling of the noise, continuum, and astrophysical uncertainties. The BOSS transmission PDFs, measured at $⟨z⟩=[2.3,2.6,3.0]$, are compared with PDFs created from mock spectra drawn from a suite of hydrodynamical simulations that sample the IGM temperature-density relationship, $\gamma$, and temperature at mean-density, $T_0$, where $T(\Delta )=T_0{\Delta }^{\gamma -1}$. We find that a significant population of partial Lyman-limit systems with a column-density distribution slope of ${\beta }_{\mathrm{pLLS}}\sim -2$ are required to explain the data at the low-transmission end of transmission PDF, while uncertainties in the mean Ly$\alpha$ forest transmission affect the high-transmission end. After modelling the LLSs and marginalizing over mean-transmission uncertainties, we find that $\gamma =1.6$ best describes the data over our entire redshift range, although constraints on $T_0$ are affected by systematic uncertainties. Within our model framework, isothermal or inverted temperature-density relationships ($\gamma \le 1$) are disfavored at a significance of over 4$\sigma$, although this could be somewhat weakened by cosmological and astrophysical uncertainties that we did not model.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in ApJ. 35 pages, 25 figures

References in corpus (112)

• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary
• Seven-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Efficient Computation of CMB anisotropies in closed FRW models
• The 2.5 m Telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Modeling feedback from stars and black holes in galaxy mergers
• SDSS-III: Massive Spectroscopic Surveys of the Distant Universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, and Extra-Solar Planetary Systems
• The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III
• Composite Quasar Spectra From the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Data Release 10 and 11 galaxy samples
• The Ninth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• The Multi-Object, Fiber-Fed Spectrographs for SDSS and the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• Cosmological parameter analysis including SDSS Ly-alpha forest and galaxy bias: constraints on the primordial spectrum of fluctuations, neutrino mass, and dark energy
• The Tenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-III Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog V. Seventh Data Release
• Warm Dark Matter as a solution to the small scale crisis: new constraints from high redshift Lyman-alpha forest data
• Equation of State of the Photoionized Intergalactic Medium
• The Third Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Spectral Classification and Redshift Measurement for the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Ly-α forest of BOSS quasars
• The Rest-Frame Extreme Ultraviolet Spectral Properties of QSOs
• On the evolution of the HI column density distribution in cosmological simulations
• The Lyman Alpha Forest in the Spectra of QSOs
• The Low Redshift Lyman Alpha Forest in Cold Dark Matter Cosmologies
• Gravitational Collapse of Small-Scale Structure as the Origin of the Lyman Alpha Forest
• The Lyman-alpha Forest Power Spectrum from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Recovery of the Power Spectrum of Mass Fluctuations from Observations of the Lyman-alpha Forest
• Probing the Universe with the Lyman-alpha Forest: I. Hydrodynamics of the Low Density IGM
• The SDSS Damped Lya Survey: Data Release 3
• The thermal history of the intergalactic medium
• Metallicity of the intergalactic medium using pixel statistics. II. The distribution of metals as traced by C IV
• The Linear Theory Power Spectrum from the Lyman-alpha Forest in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• P3M-SPH simulations of the Lyman-alpha Forest
• The Lyman Alpha Forest from Gravitational Collapse in the CDM+Lambda Model
• On the Kinematics of the Damped Lyman Alpha Protogalaxies
• The Physics of the Intergalactic Medium
• The Observed Probability Distribution Function, Power Spectrum, and Correlation Function of the Transmitted Flux in the Lyman-alpha Forest
• Detection of Extended He II Reionization in the Temperature Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium
• Column density distribution and cosmological mass density of neutral gas: Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III Data Release 9
• The SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Quasar Target Selection for Data Release Nine
• Inferring the dark matter power spectrum from the Lyman-alpha forest in high-resolution QSO absorption spectra
• Nyx: A Massively Parallel AMR Code for Computational Cosmology
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasar catalog: ninth data release
• Measurement of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Lyman-alpha Forest Fluctuations in BOSS Data Release 9
• The Cosmological Impact of Luminous TeV Blazars I: Implications of Plasma Instabilities for the Intergalactic Magnetic Field and Extragalactic Gamma-Ray Background
• HeII Reionization and its Effect on the IGM
• Search for TeV Gamma-ray Emission from GRB 100621A, an extremely bright GRB in X-rays, with H.E.S.S
• The Evolution of the Effective Equation of State of the IGM
• A Direct Precision Measurement of the Intergalactic Lyman-alpha Opacity at 2<z<4.2
• The one-dimensional Ly-alpha forest power spectrum from BOSS
• The Thermal Memory of Reionization History
• Think Outside the Color Box: Probabilistic Target Selection and the SDSS-XDQSO Quasar Targeting Catalog
• The Lyman-$\alpha$ forest in optically-thin hydrodynamical simulations
• Constraints on reionization from the thermal history of the intergalactic medium
• A Refined Measurement of the Mean Transmitted Flux in the Ly-alpha Forest over 2 < z < 5 Using Composite Quasar Spectra
• Cosmological and astrophysical parameters from the SDSS flux power spectrum and hydrodynamical simulations of the Lyman-alpha forest
• A Measurement of the Temperature-Density Relation in the Intergalactic Medium Using a New Lyman-alpha Absorption Line Fitting Method
• A Definitive Survey for Lyman Limit Systems at z~3.5 with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• On Lyman-limit Systems and the Evolution of the Intergalactic Ionizing Background
• A Measurement of Small Scale Structure in the 2.2 < z < 4.2 Lyman-alpha Forest
• Dark energy and curvature from a future baryonic acoustic oscillation survey using the Lyman-alpha forest
• Possible evidence for an inverted temperature-density relation in the intergalactic medium from the flux distribution of the Lyman-alpha forest
• The Statistics of Density Peaks and the Column Density Distribution of the Lyman-Alpha Forest
• An improved measurement of the flux distribution of the Ly-alpha forest in QSO absorption spectra: the effect of continuum fitting, metal contamination and noise properties
• Measuring the equation of state of the intergalactic medium
• Through Thick and Thin - HI Absorption in Cosmological Simulations
• Physical effects on the Lyman-alpha forest flux power spectrum: damping wings, ionizing radiation fluctuations, and galactic winds
• The Column Density Distribution and Continuum Opacity of the Intergalactic and Circumgalactic Medium at Redshift <z>=2.4
• A Principal Component Analysis of quasar UV spectra at z~3
• The Local Lyman-alpha Forest. II: Distribution of HI Absorbers, Doppler Widths, and Baryon Content
• An unbiased measurement of the UV background and its evolution via the proximity effect in quasar spectra
• The End of Helium Reionization at z~2.7 Inferred from Cosmic Variance in HST/COS HeII Lyman Alpha Absorption Spectra
• A consistent determination of the temperature of the intergalactic medium at redshift z=2.4
• The Temperature-Density Relation in the Intergalactic Medium at Redshift <z>=2.4
• Cosmological and astrophysical constraints from the Lyman-alpha forest flux probability distribution function
• Lyman-alpha Forest Tomography from Background Galaxies: The First Megaparsec-Resolution Large-Scale Structure Map at z>2
• Relativistic Pair Beams from TeV Blazars: A Source of Reprocessed GeV Emission rather than IGM Heating
• The Large-scale Distribution of Cool Gas around Luminous Red Galaxies
• Cosmological parameters sigma_8, the baryon density, and the UV background intensity from a calibrated measurement of H I Lyman-alpha absorption at z = 1.9
• A Cross-Correlation Analysis of Mg II Absorption Line Systems and Luminous Red Galaxies from the SDSS DR5
• A feature at z ~ 3.2 in the evolution of the Ly-alpha forest optical depth
• Predicting QSO Continua in the Ly Alpha Forest
• The BOSS Lyman-alpha Forest Sample from SDSS Data Release 9
• The intergalactic medium thermal history at redshift z=1.7--3.2 from the Lyman alpha forest: a comparison of measurements using wavelets and the flux distribution
• The impact of feedback from galaxy formation on the Lyman-alpha transmitted flux
• A Hubble Space Telescope Study of Lyman Limit Systems: Census and Evolution
• The Cosmological Impact of Luminous TeV Blazars II: Rewriting the Thermal History of the Intergalactic Medium
• The imprint of inhomogeneous HeII reionization on the HI and HeII Ly-alpha forest
• Mean-flux Regulated PCA Continuum Fitting of SDSS Lyman-alpha Forest Spectra
• GALEX far-UV color selection of UV-bright high-redshift quasars
• On Estimating Lyman-alpha Forest Correlations between Multiple Sightlines
• The Lyman-alpha forest in a blazar-heated Universe
• Observational Requirements for Lyman-alpha Forest Tomographic Mapping of Large-Scale Structure at z ~ 2
• Probing the Circumgalactic Medium at High-Redshift Using Composite BOSS Spectra of Strong Lyman-alpha Forest Absorbers
• New approach for precise computation of Lyman-alpha forest power spectrum with hydrodynamical simulations
• Precious Metals in SDSS Quasar Spectra I: Tracking the Evolution of Strong, 1.5 < z < 4.5 CIV Absorbers with Thousands of Systems
• Photo-heating and the fate of hard photons during the reionisation of HeII by quasars
• The Evolution of Lyman alpha Absorbers in the Redshift Range 0.5<z<1.9
• Moving mesh cosmology: properties of neutral hydrogen in absorption
• A New Method to Directly Measure the Jeans Scale of the Intergalactic Medium Using Close Quasar Pairs
• The Lyman alpha forest flux probability distribution at z>3
• The Effect of High Column Density Systems on the Measurement of the Lyman αForest Correlation Function
• Inhomogeneous Helium Reionization and the Equation of State of the Intergalactic Medium
• Generating mock data sets for large-scale Lyman-α forest correlation measurements
• The Impact of Different Physical Processes on the Statistics of Lyman-limit and Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers
• Sample variance and Lyman-alpha forest transmission statistics
• The impact of helium reionization on the structure of the intergalactic medium
• The Composite Spectrum of Strong Lyman-alpha Forest Absorbers
• The Probability Distribution of the Lya transmitted flux from a sample of SDSS quasars
• Patchy He II reionization and the physical state of the IGM
• Systematic Continuum Errors in the Lyman-Alpha Forest and The Measured Temperature-Density Relation
• Threshold Clustering Functions and Thermal Inhomogeneities in the Lyman-Alpha Forest

Cited by in corpus (66)

• The Eleventh and Twelfth Data Releases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Final Data from SDSS-III
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: Mapping the Milky Way, Nearby Galaxies, and the Distant Universe
• The Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium
• The Sherwood simulation suite: overview and data comparisons with the Lyman-alpha forest at redshifts 2 < z < 5
• New Constraints on IGM Thermal Evolution from the Lyα Forest Power Spectrum
• Reionization and galaxy inference from the high-redshift Lyα forest
• Self-Consistent Modeling of Reionization in Cosmological Hydrodynamical Simulations
• Lyman-alpha Forest Tomography from Background Galaxies: The First Megaparsec-Resolution Large-Scale Structure Map at z>2
• Characterizing the Pressure Smoothing Scale of the Intergalactic Medium
• The Lyman-alpha forest power spectrum from the XQ-100 Legacy Survey
• Shadow of a Colossus: A z=2.45 Galaxy Protocluster Detected in 3D Ly-a Forest Tomographic Mapping of the COSMOS Field
• Deep Learning of Quasar Spectra to Discover and Characterize Damped Lya Systems
• MApping the Most Massive Overdensities Through Hydrogen (MAMMOTH) I: Methodology
• A New Measurement of the Temperature Density Relation of the IGM From Voigt Profile Fitting
• A New Precision Measurement of the Small-Scale Line-of-Sight Power Spectrum of the Ly$\alpha$ Forest
• Detecting and Characterizing Young Quasars II: Four Quasars at $z\sim 6$ with Lifetimes $<10^4$ years
• Inferring the IGM thermal history during reionisation with the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest power spectrum at redshift $z\simeq 5$
• A New Method to Measure the Post-Reionization Ionizing Background from the Joint Distribution of Lyman-$\alpha$ and Lyman-$\beta$ Forest Transmission
• Protocluster Discovery in Tomographic Ly$\alpha$ Forest Flux Maps
• Measurement of the small-scale structure of the intergalactic medium using close quasar pairs
• A comparison of quasar emission reconstruction techniques for $z\ge 5.0$ Lyman-$\alpha$ and Lyman-$\beta$ transmission
• A new Measurement of the Intergalactic Temperature at $z\sim 2.55-2.95$
• The Evolution of the HeII-Ionizing Background at Redshifts 2.3<z<3.8 Inferred from a Statistical Sample of 24 HST/COS HeII Ly$\alpha$ Absorption Spectra
• TARDIS Paper I: A Constrained Reconstruction Approach to Modeling the z~2.5 Cosmic Web Probed by Lyman-alpha Forest Tomography
• Exploring the Thermal State of the Low-Density Intergalactic Medium at z=3 with an Ultra-High Signal-to-Noise QSO Spectrum
• Helium Reionization Simulations. II. Signatures of Quasar Activity on the IGM
• The impact of AGN feedback on the 1D power spectra from the Ly$\alpha$ forest using the Horizon-AGN suite of simulations
• Second Data Release of the COSMOS Lyman-alpha Mapping and Tomographic Observation: The First 3D Maps of the Detailed Cosmic Web at 2.05<z<2.55
• A Detection of $z$~2.3 Cosmic Voids from 3D Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest Tomography in the COSMOS Field
• Modeling the Lyman-alpha Forest in Collisionless Simulations
• Mock Quasar-Lyman-α Forest Data-sets for the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• Dark-ages Reionization and Galaxy Formation Simulation XX. The Ly$\alpha$ IGM transmission properties and environment of bright galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization
• Revealing the z~2.5 Cosmic Web With 3D Lyman-Alpha Forest Tomography: A Deformation Tensor Approach
• Large-scale 3D mapping of the intergalactic medium using the Lyman Alpha Forest
• TARDIS Paper II: Synergistic Density Reconstruction from Lyman-alpha Forest and Spectroscopic Galaxy Surveys with Applications to Protoclusters and the Cosmic Web
• First Detection of Cosmic Microwave Background Lensing and Lyman-α Forest Bispectrum
• Thermal state of the intergalactic medium at $z\sim 2-4$
• The Completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: The Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ systems Catalog
• Modeling the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest with Eulerian and SPH hydrodynamical methods
• Observational Evidence for Large-Scale Gas Heating in a Galaxy Protocluster at z=2.30
• A neural network emulator for the Lyman-$\alpha$ 1D flux power spectrum
• UV Background Fluctuations and Three-Point Correlations in the Large Scale Clustering of the Lyman-alpha Forest
• Probing Reionization and Early Cosmic Enrichment with the MgII Forest
• A Novel Statistical Method for Measuring the Temperature-Density Relation in the IGM Using the $b$-$N_{\text{HI}}$ Distribution of Absorbers in the Ly$\alpha$ Forest
• Measurements of effective optical depth in the Ly$\alpha$ forest from the BOSS DR12 Quasar sample
• Helium Reionization Simulations. III. The Helium Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest
• Impact of Massive Neutrinos and Dark Radiation on the High-redshift Cosmic Web. I. Lyman-Alpha Forest Observables
• Joint Bayesian Estimation of Quasar Continua and the Lyman-Alpha Forest Flux Probability Distribution Function
• A measurement of the Lyman-beta forest power spectrum and its cross with the Lyman-alpha forest in X-Shooter XQ-100
• Constraining the temperature-density relation of the intergalactic medium with the Lyman-$\alpha$ and $\beta$ forests
• Stronger Constraints on Primordial Black Holes as Dark Matter Derived from the Thermal Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium over the Last Twelve Billion Years
• LyMAS reloaded: improving the predictions of the large-scale Lyman-α forest statistics from dark matter density and velocity fields
• Constraining the Fluctuating Gunn-Peterson Approximation Using Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest Tomography at $z=2$
• Hunting Primordial Black Hole Dark Matter in Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest
• Can the Low Redshift Lyman Alpha Forest Constrain AGN Feedback Models?
• Improving IGM temperature constraints using wavelet analysis on high-redshift quasars
• Search for a direction in the forest of Lyman-$\alpha$
• Particle initialization effects on Lyman-$\alpha$ forest statistics in cosmological SPH simulations
• Measuring the thermal and ionization state of the low-$z$ IGM using likelihood free inference
• Ly$\alpha$NNA: A Deep Learning Field-level Inference Machine for the Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest
• Lognormal semi-numerical simulations of the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest: comparison with full hydrodynamic simulations
• Constraining the Temperature-Density Relation of the Inter-Galactic Medium from Analytically Modeling Lyman-alpha Forest Absorbers
• ForestFlow: predicting the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest clustering from linear to nonlinear scales
• Characterizing the Lyman-$\alpha$ flux probability distribution function using Legendre polynomials
• Equation of state of the intergalactic medium in the early Universe
• DESI DR1 Lyα 1D power spectrum: The Fast Fourier Transform estimator measurement