Photometric IGM Tomography: Efficiently Mapping Quasar Light Echoes with Deep Narrow Band Imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel photometric method using narrow-band imaging to efficiently map quasar light echoes in the IGM, enabling insights into SMBH growth history with less observational time.

Contribution

It presents a new double narrow-band imaging technique and a Bayesian framework for mapping quasar light echoes and estimating quasar lifetimes.

Findings

Efficient mapping of Ly$ ext{α}$ forest transmission using narrow-band imaging.

Bayesian method to estimate quasar lifetime from photometric data.

Potential to identify regions for detailed spectroscopic follow-up.

Abstract

In the standard picture, episodes of luminous quasar activity are directly related to supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth. The ionising radiation emitted over a quasar's lifetime alters the ionisation state of the surrounding intergalactic medium (IGM), enhancing the Ly$\alpha$ forest transmission -- so-called proximity effect -- which can be observed in absorption spectra of background sources. Owing to the finite speed of light, the transverse direction of the proximity effect is sensitive to the quasar's radiative history, resulting in `light echoes' that encode the growth history of the SMBH on Myr-timescales. In this paper, we introduce a new technique to photometrically map this quasar light echoes using Ly$\alpha$ forest tomography by using a carefully selected pair of narrow-band filters. A foreground narrow-band filter is used to measure Ly$\alpha$ forest transmission along background galaxies selected as Ly$\alpha$ emitters by a background narrow-band filter. This novel double narrow-band tomographic technique utilises the higher throughput and wider field of view of imaging over spectroscopy to efficiently reconstruct a two-dimensional map of Ly$\alpha$ forest transmission around a quasar. We present a fully Bayesian framework to measure the luminous quasar lifetime of a SMBH from photometric IGM tomography, and examine the observational requirements. This new technique provides an efficient strategy to map a large area of the sky with a modest observing time and to identify interesting regions to be examined by further deep 3D follow-up spectroscopic Ly$\alpha$ forest tomography.