THROUGH THICK AND THIN-H I ABSORPTION IN COSMOLOGICAL SIMULATIONS

被引：112
作者：
Altay, Gabriel [1 ]
Theuns, Tom [1 ,2 ]
Schaye, Joop [3 ]
Crighton, Neil H. M. [4 ]
Vecchia, Claudio Dalla [3 ,5 ]
机构：
[1] Univ Durham, Dept Phys, Inst Computat Cosmol, Durham DH1 3LE, England
[2] Univ Antwerp, Dept Phys, B-2020 Antwerp, Belgium
[3] Leiden Univ, Leiden Observ, NL-2300 RA Leiden, Netherlands
[4] Max Planck Inst Astron, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany
[5] Max Planck Inst Extraterr Phys, D-85478 Garching, Germany
来源：
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS | 2011年 / 737卷 / 02期
关键词：
galaxies: formation; intergalactic medium; large-scale structure of universe; methods: numerical; quasars: absorption lines; DAMPED LY-ALPHA; LYMAN LIMIT SYSTEMS; COLUMN DENSITY DISTRIBUTION; COSMIC STAR-FORMATION; HIGH-REDSHIFT; EVOLUTION; MATTER; FOREST; GAS; ABSORBERS;
D O I：
10.1088/2041-8205/737/2/L37
中图分类号：
P1 [天文学];
学科分类号：
0704 ;
摘要：
We investigate the column density distribution function of neutral hydrogen at redshift z = 3 using a cosmological simulation of galaxy formation from the OverWhelmingly Large Simulations project. The base simulation includes gravity, hydrodynamics, star formation, supernovae feedback, stellar winds, chemodynamics, and element-by-element cooling in the presence of a uniform UV background. Self-shielding and formation of molecular hydrogen are treated in post-processing, without introducing any free parameters, using an accurate reverse ray-tracing algorithm and an empirical relation between gas pressure and molecular mass fraction. The simulation reproduces the observed z = 3 abundance of Ly alpha forest, Lyman limit, and damped Ly alpha H I absorption systems probed by quasar sight lines over 10 orders of magnitude in column density. Self-shielding flattens the column density distribution for N-HI > 1018 cm(-2), while the transition to fully neutral gas and conversion of H I to H-2 steepen it around column densities of N-H (I) = 10(20.3) cm(-2) and N-H (I) = 10(21.5) cm(-2), respectively.
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页数：6
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