The visibility of Lyman Alpha Emitters: constraining reionization, ionizing photons and dust

Understand

We build a physical model for high-redshift Lyman Alpha emitters (LAEs) by coupling state of the art cosmological simulations (GADGET-2) with a dust model and a radiative transfer code (pCRASH).

• We post-process the cosmological simulation with pCRASH using five different values of the escape fraction of hydrogen ionizing photons (f_esc=0.05,0.25,0.5,0.75,0.95) until reionization is complete, i.e.
• the average neutral hydrogen fraction drops to <X_HI>~10^-4.
• Then, the only free-parameter left to match model results to the observed Lya and UV luminosity functions of LAEs at z~6.6 is the relative escape of Lyman Alpha (Lya) and continuum photons from the galactic environment (f_alpha/f_c).