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The distribution of neutral hydrogen around high-redshift galaxies and quasars in the EAGLE simulation

Rahmati, Alireza; Schaye, Joop; Bower, Richard G; Crain, Robert A; Furlong, Michelle; Schaller, Matthieu; Theuns, Tom (2015). The distribution of neutral hydrogen around high-redshift galaxies and quasars in the EAGLE simulation. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 452(2):2034-2056.

Abstract

The observed high covering fractions of neutral hydrogen (HI) with column densities above $\sim 10^{17} \rm{cm}^{-2}$ around Lyman-Break Galaxies (LBGs) and bright quasars at redshifts z ~ 2-3 has been identified as a challenge for simulations of galaxy formation. We use the EAGLE cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation, which has been shown to reproduce a wide range of galaxy properties and for which the subgrid feedback was calibrated without considering gas properties, to study the distribution of HI around high-redshift galaxies. We predict the covering fractions of strong HI absorbers ($N_{\rm{HI}} \gtrsim 10^{17} \rm{cm}^{-2}$) inside haloes to increase rapidly with redshift but to depend only weakly on halo mass. For massive ($M_{200} \gtrsim 10^{12} {\rm M_{\odot}}$) halos the covering fraction profiles are nearly scale-invariant and we provide fitting functions that reproduce the simulation results. While efficient feedback is required to increase the HI covering fractions to the high observed values, the distribution of strong absorbers in and around halos of a fixed mass is insensitive to factor of two variations in the strength of the stellar feedback. In contrast, at fixed stellar mass the predicted HI distribution is highly sensitive to the feedback efficiency. The fiducial EAGLE simulation reproduces both the observed global column density distribution function of HI and the observed radial covering fraction profiles of strong HI absorbers around LBGs and bright quasars.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:07 Faculty of Science > Institute for Computational Science
Dewey Decimal Classification:530 Physics
Scopus Subject Areas:Physical Sciences > Astronomy and Astrophysics
Physical Sciences > Space and Planetary Science
Language:English
Date:September 2015
Deposited On:22 Feb 2016 15:00
Last Modified:15 Oct 2024 01:37
Publisher:Oxford University Press
ISSN:0035-8711
Additional Information:This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2015 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
OA Status:Hybrid
Free access at:Publisher DOI. An embargo period may apply.
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv1414
Other Identification Number:arXiv:1503.05553v2
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