The MUSE Extremely Deep Field: the Cosmic Web in Emission at High Redshift

Abstract

We report the discovery of diffuse extended Ly-alpha emission from redshift 3.1 to 4.5, tracing cosmic web filaments on scales of 2.5-4 comoving Mpc. These structures have been observed in overdensities of Ly-alpha emitters in the MUSE Extremely Deep Field, a 140 hour deep MUSE observation located in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Among the 22 overdense regions identified, 5 are likely to harbor very extended Ly-alpha emission at high significance with an average surface brightness of $5\times 10^{-20}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}\mathrm{arcse}{\mathrm{c}}^{-2}$. Remarkably, 70% of the total Ly-alpha luminosity from these filaments comes from beyond the circumgalactic medium of any identified Ly-alpha emitters. Fluorescent Ly-alpha emission powered by the cosmic UV background can only account for less than 34% of this emission at z$\approx$3 and for not more than 10% at higher redshift. We find that the bulk of this diffuse emission can be reproduced by the unresolved Ly-alpha emission of a large population of ultra low luminosity Ly-alpha emitters ($<10^{40}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$), provided that the faint end of the Ly-alpha luminosity function is steep ($\alpha ⪅-1.8$), it extends down to luminosities lower than $10^{38}-10^{37}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ and the clustering of these Ly-alpha emitters is significant (filling factor $<1/6$). If these Ly-alpha emitters are powered by star formation, then this implies their luminosity function needs to extend down to star formation rates $<10^{-4}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }\mathrm{y}{\mathrm{r}}^{-1}$. These observations provide the first detection of the cosmic web in Ly-alpha emission in typical filamentary environments and the first observational clue for the existence of a large population of ultra low luminosity Ly-alpha emitters at high redshift.

arXiv comment28 pages, 19 figures

References in corpus (133)

• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Binary companions of evolved stars in APOGEE DR14: Search method and catalog of ~5,000 companions
• The Origin of the Mass--Metallicity Relation: Insights from 53,000 Star-Forming Galaxies in the SDSS
• The physical properties of star forming galaxies in the low redshift universe
• How Do Galaxies Get Their Gas?
• The Formation of Galactic Disks
• Radiative Transfer in a Clumpy Universe: II. The Utraviolet Extragalactic Background
• Rest-Frame Ultraviolet Spectra of z~3 Lyman Break Galaxies
• A simple model to interpret the ultraviolet, optical and infrared emission from galaxies
• UniverseMachine: The Correlation between Galaxy Growth and Dark Matter Halo Assembly from z=0-10
• Radiative transfer in a clumpy universe: IV. New synthesis models of the cosmic UV/X-ray background
• How Filaments are Woven into the Cosmic Web
• The Circumgalactic Medium
• The Hubble Ultra Deep Field
• The Herschel view of the dominant mode of galaxy growth from z=4 to the present day
• Equation of State of the Photoionized Intergalactic Medium
• A Large Structure of Galaxies At Redshift z~3 and its Cosmological Implications
• The Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Survey (SXDS). IV. Evolution of Lya Emitters from z=3.1 to 5.7 in the 1 deg^2 Field: Luminosity Functions and AGN
• Massloss of galaxies due to a UV-background
• The Chandra Deep Field-South Survey: 7 Ms Source Catalogs
• An ALMA survey of Sub-millimeter Galaxies in the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: Physical properties derived from ultraviolet-to-radio modelling
• EMERGE - An empirical model for the formation of galaxies since $z\sim 10$
• A cosmic web filament revealed in Lyman-alpha emission around a luminous high-redshift quasar
• Directly Observing the Galaxies Likely Responsible for Reionization
• Tracing the cosmic web
• The Data Processing Pipeline for the MUSE Instrument
• Quasi-Stellar Objects, Ultraluminous IR Galaxies, and Mergers
• The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey: I. Survey description, data reduction and source detection
• The Physics of the Intergalactic Medium
• ZAP -- Enhanced PCA Sky Subtraction for Integral Field Spectroscopy
• The Relation Between SFR and Stellar Mass for Galaxies at 3.5 $\le z\le$ 6.5 in CANDELS
• GALICS I: A hybrid N-body semi-analytic model of hierarchical galaxy formation
• New Measurements of the Ionizing Ultraviolet Background over 2 < z < 5 and Implications for Hydrogen Reionization
• The Keck Lyman Continuum Spectroscopic Survey (KLCS): The Emergent Ionizing Spectrum of Galaxies at $z\sim 3$
• Ubiquitous giant Ly $\alpha$ nebulae around the brightest quasars at $z\sim 3.5$ revealed with MUSE
• The mass evolution of the first galaxies: stellar mass functions and star formation rates at $4<z<7$ in the CANDELS GOODS-South field
• Extended Lyman alpha haloes around individual high-redshift galaxies revealed by MUSE
• Cooling Radiation and the Lyman-alpha Luminosity of Forming Galaxies
• The SPHINX Cosmological Simulations of the First Billion Years: the Impact of Binary Stars on Reionization
• The z~6 Luminosity Function Fainter than -15 mag from the Hubble Frontier Fields: The Impact of Magnification Uncertainties
• The Extreme Faint End of the UV Luminosity Function at $z\sim 6$ Through Gravitational Telescopes: a comprehensive assessment of strong lensing uncertainties
• Lyman Alpha Cooling Radiation from High-Redshift Halos
• A Cosmic UV/X-ray Background Model Update
• Lyman-alpha Cooling Emission from Galaxy Formation
• Systematic Identification of LAEs for Visible Exploration and Reionization Research Using Subaru HSC (SILVERRUSH). I. Program Strategy and Clustering Properties of ~2,000 Lya Emitters at z=6-7 over the 0.3-0.5 Gpc${}^2$ Survey Area
• Extended Lyman-alpha emission from cold accretion streams
• Fluorescent Ly-alpha emission from the high-redshift intergalactic medium
• Baryons in the CosmicWeb of IllustrisTNG - I: Gas in Knots, Filaments, Sheets and Voids
• Observations of the Lyman-$\alpha$ Universe
• Lyman Alpha Blobs as an Observational Signature of Cold Accretion Streams into Galaxies
• The stellar-to-halo mass relation over the past 12 Gyr
• UVUDF: Ultraviolet Through Near-infrared Catalog and Photometric Redshifts of Galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
• The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey: II. Spectroscopic redshifts and comparisons to color selections of high-redshift galaxies
• CARS: The CFHTLS-Archive-Research Survey II. Weighing dark matter halos of Lyman-break galaxies at z=3-5
• 3D Lyman-alpha radiation transfer. III. Constraints on gas and stellar properties of z~3 Lyman break galaxies (LBG) and implications for high-z LBGs and Lyman-alpha emitters(LAEs)
• Gas filaments of the cosmic web located around active galaxies in a proto-cluster
• Tracing the large scale structure in the Chandra Deep Field South
• Nearly all the sky is covered by Lyman-alpha emission around high redshift galaxies
• What is the physical origin of strong Lya emission? II. Gas Kinematics and Distribution of Lya Emitters
• Cold accretion flows and the nature of high column density HI absorption at redshift 3
• An Atlas of MUSE Observations towards Twelve Massive Lensing Clusters
• A Lyman-alpha blob in the GOODS South field: evidence for cold accretion onto a dark matter halo
• Imaging the Lyman-alpha Forest
• GOLDRUSH. II. Clustering of Galaxies at $z\sim 4-6$ Revealed with the Half-Million Dropouts Over the 100 deg${}^2$ Area Corresponding to 1 Gpc${}^3$
• Extended Lyman Alpha Emission Around Young Quasars: a Constraint on Galaxy Formation
• Lyman-alpha Emission From Cosmic Structure I: Fluorescence
• Lyman-alpha Emission from Structure Formation
• Large-scale Filamentary Structure around the Protocluster at Redshift z=3.1
• Recovering the systemic redshift of galaxies from their Lyman-alpha line profile
• MARZ: Manual and Automatic Redshifting Software
• The MUSE-Wide Survey: Survey Description and First Data Release
• First Data Release of the COSMOS Lyman-Alpha Mapping And Tomography Observations: 3D Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest Tomography at 2.05 < z < 2.55
• The VIMOS VLT Deep Survey: Star Formation Rate Density of Lya emitters from a sample of 217 galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts 2<z<6.6
• Semi-analytic forecasts for JWST -- II. physical properties and scaling relations for galaxies at z = 4-10
• Understanding the escape of LyC and Ly$\alpha$ photons from turbulent clouds
• Massive Star cluster formation under the microscope at z=6
• The Chandra Deep Protocluster Survey: Evidence for an Enhancement in the AGN Activity in the SSA22 Protocluster at z = 3.09
• SILVERRUSH. VIII. Spectroscopic Identifications of Early Large Scale Structures with Protoclusters Over 200 Mpc at z~6-7: Strong Associations of Dusty Star-Forming Galaxies
• The impact of local stellar radiation on the HI column density distribution
• First spectroscopic measurements of [OIII] emission from Lyman-alpha selected field galaxies at z ~ 3.1
• The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey VI: The Faint-End of the Lya Luminosity Function at 2.91 < z < 6.64 and Implications for Reionisation
• The HETDEX Pilot Survey V: The Physical Origin of Lyman-alpha Emitters Probed by Near-infrared Spectroscopy
• Grid of Lya radiation transfer models for the interpretation of distant galaxies
• Intra-group diffuse light in compact groups of galaxies. HCG 79, HCG 88 and HCG 95
• The Evolution Of The Faint End Of The UV Luminosity Function During The Peak Epoch Of Star Formation (1<z<3)
• The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey XIII. Spatially resolved spectral properties of Lyman alpha haloes around star-forming galaxies at z > 3
• Panoramic Survey of Lyman α Emitters at z=3.1
• MUSE searches for galaxies near very metal-poor gas clouds at z~3: new constraints for cold accretion models
• The MUSE Deep Lensed Field on the Hubble Frontier Field MACS~J0416
• Elevated ionizing photon production efficiency in faint high-equivalent-width Lyman-alpha emitters
• The Globular Cluster - Dark Matter Halo Connection
• The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey VIII : Extended Lyman-alpha haloes around high-redshift star-forming galaxies
• The Star Formation Rate Distribution Function of the Local Universe
• The MUSE-Wide Survey: A determination of the Lyman $\alpha$ emitter luminosity function at $3<z<6$
• MUSEQuBES: Calibrating the redshifts of Ly α emitters using stacked circumgalactic medium absorption profiles
• MORESANE: MOdel REconstruction by Synthesis-ANalysis Estimators. A sparse deconvolution algorithm for radio interferometric imaging
• CODEX clusters. The Survey, the Catalog, and Cosmology of the X-ray Luminosity Function
• On the importance of local sources of radiation for quasar absorption line systems
• The UV, Lyman-alpha, and dark matter halo properties of high redshift galaxies
• The Very Faint End of the UV Luminosity Function over Cosmic Time: Constraints from the Local Group Fossil Record
• On the Indeterministic Nature of Star Formation on the Cloud Scale
• The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey: IV. Global properties of C III] emitters
• Calibrating Galaxy Redshifts Using Absorption by the Surrounding Intergalactic Medium
• Galaxy and Quasar Fueling Caught in the Act from the Intragroup to the Interstellar Medium
• SILVERRUSH. II. First Catalogs and Properties of ~2,000 Lya Emitters and Blobs at z~6-7 Identified over the 14-21 deg2 Sky
• Modelling high redshift Lyman-alpha Emitters
• Spectral shapes of the Lyman-alpha emission from galaxies: I. blueshifted emission and intrinsic invariance with redshift
• Caltech Faint Galaxy Redshift Survey VIII: Analysis for the Field J0053+1234
• A closer look at using quasar near-zones as a probe of neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium
• Reconstruction of the ground-layer adaptive-optics point spread function for MUSE Wide Field Mode observations
• Small-scale Intensity Mapping: Extended Ly$\alpha$, H$\alpha$ and Continuum emission as a Probe of Halo Star Formation in High-redshift Galaxies
• MUSE Spectroscopic Identifications of Ultra-Faint Emission Line Galaxies with M${}_{\mathrm{UV}}\sim$ -15
• The MUSE Ultra Deep Field (MUDF). I. Discovery of a group of Ly$\alpha$ nebulae associated with a bright $z\approx 3.23$ quasar pair
• Stacking the Cosmic Web in Fluorescent Lyman alpha Emission with MUSE
• Chasing Lyman alpha-emitting galaxies at z = 8.8
• Faint end of the $z\sim 3-7$ luminosity function of Lyman-alpha emitters behind lensing clusters observed with MUSE
• Ly$\alpha$ view around a z=2.84 hyperluminous QSO at a node of the cosmic web
• Deciphering Lyman $\alpha$ blob 1 with deep MUSE observations
• ALMA Deep Field in SSA22: Survey Design and Source Catalog of a 20 arcmin^2 Survey at 1.1mm
• Tracing the simulated high-redshift circum-galactic medium with Lyman alpha emission
• BlueMUSE: Project Overview and Science Cases
• Lyman-Alpha Emitter Galaxies at z ~ 2.8 in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South: I. Tracing the Large-Scale Structure via Lyman-Alpha Imaging
• The impact of modified gravity on the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect
• MPDAF - A Python package for the analysis of VLT/MUSE data
• ORIGIN: Blind detection of faint emission line galaxies in MUSE datacubes
• Discovery of intergalactic bridges connecting two faint $z\sim 3$ quasars
• Lyman-α Emitters in the context of hierarchical galaxy formation: predictions for VLT/MUSE surveys
• The Distribution of Ly-alpha-Emitting Galaxies at z=2.38: Paper 2, Spectroscopy
• Probing the AGN Unification Model at redshift z $\sim$ 3 with MUSE observations of giant Ly$\alpha$ nebulae
• Lyman-alpha emitters in a cosmological volume II: the impact of the intergalactic medium
• Three Dimensional Optimal Spectral Extraction (TDOSE) from Integral Field Spectroscopy
• A parallel & automatically tuned algorithm for multispectral image deconvolution
• Detecting the Cosmic Web: Lyα Emission from Simulated Filaments at z=3

Cited by in corpus (50)

• The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field surveys: Data release II
• High-z galaxies with JWST and local analogues -- it is not only star formation
• MusE GAs FLOw and Wind (MEGAFLOW) VIII. Discovery of a MgII emission halo probed by a quasar sightline
• (Re)Solving Reionization with Lyα: How Bright Lyα Emitters account for the $z\approx 2-8$ Cosmic Ionizing Background
• The physical origins and dominant emission mechanisms of Lyman-alpha halos: results from the TNG50 simulation in comparison to MUSE observations
• Lyman-$\alpha$ as a tracer of cosmic reionisation in the SPHINX radiation-hydrodynamics cosmological simulation
• MUSE Analysis of Gas around Galaxies (MAGG) -- IV: The gaseous environment of $z\sim$ 3-4 Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies
• The cold circumgalactic medium in emission: MgII halos in TNG50
• Equivalent widths of Lyman $\alpha$ emitters in MUSE-Wide and MUSE-Deep
• JADES: Primaeval Lyman-$\alpha$ emitting galaxies reveal early sites of reionisation out to redshift $z\sim 9$
• MUSEQuBES: Characterizing the circumgalactic medium of redshift $\approx 3.3$ Ly$\alpha$ emitters
• GN-z11: The environment of an AGN at $z=$10.603
• Bipolar Outflows out to 10~kpc for Massive Galaxies at Redshift $z\approx 1$
• The MUSE Extremely Deep Field: Evidence for SFR-induced cores in dark-matter dominated galaxies at z=1
• The MUSE eXtremely Deep Field: Individual detections of Lyα haloes around rest-frame UV-selected galaxies at z~2.9-4.4
• SUPER. VI. A giant molecular halo around a z~2 quasar
• Surface Brightness Profile of Lyman-$\alpha$ Halos out to 320 kpc in HETDEX
• Metal line emission from galaxy haloes at z~1
• The MUSE Extremely Deep Field: a first panoramic view of an Mg II emitting intragroup medium
• A cosmic stream of atomic carbon gas connected to a massive radio galaxy at redshift 3.8
• Recovery and analysis of rest-frame UV emission lines in 2052 galaxies observed with MUSE at $1.5<z<6.4$
• Detection of companion galaxies around hot dust-obscured hyper-luminous galaxy W0410-0913
• The cosmic web in Lyman-alpha emission
• The MUSE Ultra Deep Field (MUDF). III. Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 Grism Spectroscopy and Imaging
• Median Surface Brightness Profiles of Lyman-$\alpha$ Haloes in the MUSE Extremely Deep Field
• 3D tomography of the giant Ly$\alpha$ nebulae of $z$$\approx$3--5 radio-loud AGN
• SILVERRUSH. XI. Intensity Mapping for Lya Emission Extending over $100-1000$ comoving kpc around $z\sim 2-7$ LAEs with Subaru HSC-SSP and CHORUS Data
• Prospects for Observing the low-density Cosmic Web in Lyman-alpha Emission
• Colour jumps across the spiral arms of Hubble Ultra Deep Field galaxies
• Deciphering stellar metallicities in the early Universe: Case study of a young galaxy at z = 4.77 in the MUSE eXtremely Deep Field
• Metal content of the circumgalactic medium around star-forming galaxies at z $\sim$ 2.6 as revealed by the VIMOS Ultra-Deep Survey
• Probing the Diffuse Lyman-alpha Emission on Cosmological Scales: Lyα Emission Intensity Mapping Using the Complete SDSS-IV eBOSS Survey
• MusE GAs FLOw and Wind (MEGAFLOW) XII. Rationale and design of a MgII survey of the cool circum-galactic medium with MUSE and UVES: The MEGAFLOW Survey
• UV & Ly$\alpha$ halos of Ly$\alpha$ emitters across environments at z=2.84
• Spatially-resolved Spectroscopic Analysis of Ly$\alpha$ Haloes: Radial Evolution of the Ly$\alpha$ Line Profile out to 60 kpc
• Probing patchy reionisation with JWST: IGM opacity constraints from the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest of galaxies in legacy extragalactic fields
• Revisiting the Emission Line Source Detection Problem in Integral Field Spectroscopic Data
• Prospects for detecting cosmic filaments in Lyman-alpha emission across redshifts $z=2-5$
• Probing the cosmic web in Ly$\alpha$ emission over large scales: an Intensity Mapping forecast for DECaLS/BASS and DESI
• Discovery of faint double-peak Halpha emission in the halo of low redshift galaxies
• Introducing cosmosTNG: simulating galaxy formation with constrained realizations of the COSMOS field
• The contribution of faint Lyman-$\alpha$ emitters to extended Lyman-$\alpha$ halos constrained by MUSE clustering measurements
• The pathfinder Dragonfly Spectral Line Mapper: Pushing the limits for ultra-low surface brightness spectroscopy
• The BlueMUSE data reduction pipeline: lessons learned from MUSE and first design choices
• Candidate cosmic filament in the GJ526 field, mapped with the NIKA2 camera
• Resolving circumgalactic gas flows around a z$\approx$3.6 quasar using MUSE and ALMA
• The stellar population of a $z\sim 3.25$ Ly$\alpha$ emitting group associated with a damped Ly$\alpha$ absorber
• Andromeda's tenuous veil: A likely Milky Way nebula projected toward M31
• Bayesian luminosity function estimation in multi-depth datasets with selection effects: A case study for $3<z<5$ Lyman $\alpha$ emitters
• Propagating Instability for Wave Dark Matter