Adrianne Slyz

Abstract:

The standard cosmological model (Λ cold dark matter, ΛCDM) predicts the existence of the cosmic web: A distribution of matter into sheets and filaments connecting massive haloes. However, observational evidence has been elusive due to the low surface brightness levels of the filaments. Recent deep Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE)/Very Large Telescope (VLT) data and upcoming observations offer a promising avenue for Lyα detection, motivating the development of modern theoretical predictions. We use hydrodynamical cosmological simulations run with the arepo code to investigate the potential detectability of large-scale filaments, excluding contributions from the haloes embedded in them. We focus on filaments connecting massive (M200c (1-3)× 1012, M⊙) haloes at z = 3, and compare different simulation resolutions, feedback levels, and mock image pixel sizes. We find increasing simulation resolution does not substantially improve detectability notwithstanding the intrinsic enhancement of internal filament structure. By contrast, for a MUSE integration of 31 h, including feedback increases the detectable area by a factor of ≥5.5 on average compared with simulations without feedback, implying that even the non-bound components of the filaments have substantial sensitivity to feedback. Degrading the image resolution from the native MUSE scale of 0.2 arcsec2 pixel-1 to 5.3 arcsec2 apertures has the strongest effect, increasing the detectable area by a median factor of ≥200 and is most effective when the size of the pixel roughly matches the width of the filament. Finally, we find the majority of Lyα emission is due to electron impact collisional excitations, as opposed to radiative recombination.

Abstract:

We use the SPHINX suite of high-resolution cosmological radiation hydrodynamics simulations to study how spatially and temporally inhomogeneous reionization impacts the baryonic content of dwarf galaxies and cosmic filaments. We compare simulations with and without stellar radiation to isolate the effects of radiation feedback from that of supernova, cosmic expansion, and numerical resolution. We find that the gas content of cosmic filaments can be reduced by more than 80 per cent following reionization. The gas inflow rates into haloes with Mvir≲108M⊙ are strongly affected and are reduced by more than an order of magnitude compared to the simulation without reionization. A significant increase in gas outflow rates is found for halo masses Mvir≲7×107M⊙⁠. Our simulations show that inflow suppression (i.e. starvation), rather than photoevaporation, is the dominant mechanism by which the baryonic content of high-redshift dwarf galaxies is regulated. At fixed redshift and halo mass, there is a large scatter in the halo baryon fractions that is entirely dictated by the timing of reionization in the local region surrounding a halo which can change by Δz ≳ 3 at fixed mass. Finally, although the gas content of high-redshift dwarf galaxies is significantly impacted by reionization, we find that most haloes with Mvir≲108M⊙ can remain self-shielded and form stars long after reionization, until their local gas reservoir is depleted, suggesting that Local Group dwarf galaxies do not necessarily exhibit star formation histories that peak prior to z = 6. Significantly larger simulation boxes will be required to capture the full process of reionization and understand how our results translate to environments not probed by our current work.