Influence of turbulence on Lyman-alpha scattering

Abstract

We develop a Monte Carlo radiative transfer code to study the effect of turbulence with a finite correlation length on scattering of Lyman-alpha (Ly$\alpha$) photons propagating through neutral atomic hydrogen gas. We investigate how the effective mean free path, the emergent spectrum, and the average number of scatterings that Ly$\alpha$ photons experience change in the presence of turbulence. We find that the correlation length is an important and sensitive parameter that has an influence on physically relevant properties of Ly$\alpha$ radiative transfer. In particular, it can significantly, by orders of magnitude, reduce the number of scattering events that the average Ly$\alpha$ photon undergoes before it escapes the turbulent cloud.

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Lyman-$\alpha$ feedback prevails at Cosmic Dawn: Implications for the first galaxies, stars, and star clusters
• Prospects for detecting cosmic filaments in Lyman-alpha emission across redshifts $z=2-5$