Were progenitors of local L* galaxies Lyman-alpha emitters at high redshift?

Details Were progenitors of local L* galaxies Lyman-alpha emitters at high redshift? Were progenitors of local L* galaxies Lyman-alpha emitters at high redshift?

2011-12-05

arxiv.org/abs/1112.1031v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

14 pages, 11 figures, submitted to ApJ

Scientific paper

The Lya emission has been observed from galaxies over a redshift span z ~ 0 - 8.6. However, the link between high-redshift Lya emitters (LAEs) and local galaxies is largely unknown. Here, we investigate the Lya properties of progenitors of a local L^{*} galaxy by combining cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with three-dimensional radiative transfer calculations using the new ART^2 code. We find that the modeled galaxies are Lya bright in redshift z= 0 - 10. In particular, the Lya luminosities of some massive progenitors at z ~ 2 - 6 are close to the observed characteristic L_{Lya}^{*} of LAEs in that redshift range. Both Lya photon escape fraction and line equivalent width increase with redshift. The Lya escape fraction correlates with a number of physical properties of the galaxy, such as mass, SFR and metallicity. We find a "viewing-angle scatter" in which the photon escape depends strongly on the galaxy morphology and orientation. Moreover, we find that high-redshift LAEs show blue-shifted Lya line profiles characteristic of gas inflow, and that the Lya emission by excitation cooling increases with redshift, and becomes dominant at z > 6. Our results suggest that galaxies at high redshift form through accretion of cold gas, and that the observed LAEs at z ~ 2-6 with luminosity of L ~ 10^{42-43} erg/s may evolve into present-day L^{*} galaxies.

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