Pressure Support vs. Thermal Broadening in the Lyman-alpha Forest II: Effects of the Equation of State on Transverse Structure

TL;DR

This study investigates how gas pressure influences the transverse coherence of the high-redshift Lyman-alpha forest, revealing pressure effects dominate over thermal broadening in shaping the transverse structure on small scales.

Contribution

It compares hydrodynamical simulations with different heating rates to show pressure's role in transverse coherence, providing new insights into IGM temperature-density relations.

Findings

Higher pressure increases transverse coherence of the Lyman-alpha forest.

Pressure effects reduce redshift-space anisotropy in flux correlations.

Transverse structure is dominated by pressure rather than thermal broadening.

Abstract

We examine the impact of gas pressure on the transverse coherence of high-redshift (2 <= z <= 4) Lyman-alpha forest absorption along neighboring lines of sight that probe the gas Jeans scale (projected separation Delta r <= 500 kpc/h comoving; angular separation Delta theta <= 30"). We compare predictions from two smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations that have different photoionization heating rates and thus different temperature-density relations in the intergalactic medium (IGM). We also compare spectra computed from the gas distributions to those computed from the pressureless dark matter. The coherence along neighboring sightlines is markedly higher for the hotter, higher pressure simulation, and lower for the dark matter spectra. We quantify this coherence using the flux cross-correlation function and the conditional distribution of flux decrements as a function of transverse and line-of-sight (velocity) separation. Sightlines separated by Delta theta <= 15" are ideal for probing this transverse coherence. Higher pressure decreases the redshift-space anisotropy of the flux correlation function, while higher thermal broadening increases the anisotropy. In contrast to the longitudinal (line-of-sight) structure of the Lya forest, the transverse structure on these scales is dominated by pressure effects rather than thermal broadening. With the rapid recent growth in the number of known close quasar pairs, paired line-of-sight observations offer a promising new route to probe the IGM temperature-density relation and test the unexpectedly high temperatures that have been inferred from single sightline analyses.