Decaying neutrinos and the abundance of He I in Lyman limit systems and Lyman-Alpha clouds

Details Decaying neutrinos and the abundance of He I in Lyman limit systems and Lyman-Alpha clouds Decaying neutrinos and the abundance of He I in Lyman limit systems and Lyman-Alpha clouds

Feb 1994

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994apj...422l..49s&link_type=abstract

Astrophysical Journal, Part 2 - Letters (ISSN 0004-637X), vol. 422, no. 2, p. L49-L50

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

11

Abundance, Helium Isotopes, Lyman Alpha Radiation, Molecular Clouds, Neutrinos, Radioactive Decay, Absorption Spectra, Quasars, Red Shift

Scientific paper

In this Letter we show that photons from decaying intergalactic neutrinos could explain an anomaly recently found by Reimers & Vogel in the abundance of He I in three high-redshift Lyman limit systems of the Quasi Stellar Object (QSO) HS 1700+6416. Their data and analysis yield He I column densities approximately 5 times greater than given by their model calculations. They conclude that the effective hydrogen ionizing flux is about eight times greater than the helium ionizing flux. Such a steep spectrum is not expected for the integrated radiation from QSOs but would arise naturally in the decaying neutrino theory, whose decay photons can ionize hydrogen but not helium. Similar considerations show that the decaying neutrino theory is compatible with the upper limits found by Reimers & Vogel for the column density of He I in three Lyman alpha clouds along the line of sight to HS 1700+6416. Both these conclusions depend on the absence of significant intergalactic absorption of photons capable of ionizing He II. This assumption can be tested by searching for a He II Gunn-Peterson absorption trough in the spectra of suitable QSOs.

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