Friday, October 21, 2011

1106.2811 (Zhen-Ya Zheng et al.)

X-ray Constraints on the Lyman-Alpha Escape Fraction    [PDF]

Zhen-Ya Zheng, Sangeeta Malhotra, Jun-Xian Wang, James E. Rhoads, Steven L. Finkelstein, Eric Gawiser, Caryl Gronwall, Lucia Guaita, Kim K. Nilsson, Robin Ciardullo
We have coadded X-ray flux of all known Lyman Alpha Emitters (LAEs) in the 4 Msec Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S) region, to place sensitive upper limits on the average unobscured star-formation rate (SFR_X) in these galaxies. A very small fraction of Lyman-Alpha galaxies in the field are individually detected in the X-rays, implying a low fraction of AGN activity. After excluding the few X-ray detected LAEs, we stack the undetected LAEs located in the 4 Ms CDF-S data and 250 ks Extended CDF-S (ECDFS) data, and compute a 1-\sigma upper limit on SFR_X < 14, 28, 28, 140, 440, 880 M$_{\sun}$ yr$^{-1}$ for LAEs located at z = 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 4.5, 5.7 and 6.5, respectively. The upper limit of SFR_X in LAEs can be then be compared to SFR$_{Ly\alpha}$ derived from Lyman-Alpha line and thus can constrain on the Lyman-Alpha escape fraction ($f^{Esc}_{Ly\alpha}$). We derive a lower limit on f(Lyman-Alpha Escape) > 14% (84 % confidence level, 1-\sigma lower limit) for LAEs at redshift z ~ 2.1 and z ~ 3.1-3.2. At z > 4, the current LAE samples are not of sufficient size to constrain SFR_X well. By averaging all the LAEs at z> 2, the X-ray non-detection constrains f(Lyman-Alpha Escape) > 17% (84 % confidence level, 1-\sigma lower limit), and rejects f(Lyman-Alpha Escape) < 5.7% at the 99.87% confidence level from 2.1 < z < 6.5.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.2811

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