Lyman-alpha radiative transfer and cosmological applications
Argyro "Iro" Tasitsiomi
Princeton University
January 21, 2008, 4PM, Steward N210
From the solar corona, Herbig-Haro objects, and supernova remnants, to the
intermediate and higher redshift galaxies, Lyman-alpha photons seem to
be produced in copious amounts in the universe. The value and use of the
Lyman-alpha line as a diagnostic of the emitting configuration depends on
how the line is affected by neutral hydrogen. In my talk I will first
review the basic physics of Lyman-alpha radiative transfer (RT), and
briefly discuss some simple models of Lyman limit and Damped Lyman-alpha
systems. Then I will discuss the difficulties one encounters when trying
to perform Lyman-alpha RT in the complicated environments produced in
cosmological simulations, along with the ways to overcome them. I
will present results on individual, high redshift emitters produced in
high resolutions N-body+gas dynamics cosmological simulations. Last, I
will discuss the possibility of obtaining information about reionization
by following the time evolution of the Lyman-alpha emitter luminosity
function.
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