Radiative Transfer Simulations of Lyman Alpha Emitters on Cosmological Scales

Abstract

Lyman-alpha emitters can be used as probes of the large-scale structure at intermediate redshifts. Recent work discusses a possible distortion from radiative transfer effects of the resonant Lyman-alpha line on the observed clustering statistics, which would also affect the upcoming HETDEX survey aiming to measure the dark energy equation of state. We reassess the influence of Lyman-alpha scattering on observed emitters by running a Lyman-alpha transport simulation on the datasets from the state of the art cosmological simulations run in the Illustris Project, combining a large volume at high resolution with various baryon feedback processes. We do not find such distortion effect. The processed datasets are also useful for the study of individual Lyman-alpha emitter in their cosmological environment and use of Lyman-alpha intensity mapping. Both applications are discussed.