The Impact of Scatter in the Galaxy UV Luminosity to Halo Mass Relation on Ly$\alpha$ Visibility During the Epoch of Reionization

Understand

The reionization of hydrogen is closely linked to the first structures in the universe, so understanding the timeline of reionization promises to shed light on the nature of these early objects.

• In particular, transmission of Lyman alpha (Ly$\alpha$) from galaxies through the intergalactic medium (IGM) is sensitive to neutral hydrogen in the IGM, so can be used to probe the reionization timeline.
• In this work, we implement an improved model of the galaxy UV luminosity to dark matter halo mass relation to infer the volume-averaged fraction of neutral hydrogen in the IGM from Ly$\alpha$ observations.
• Many models assume that UV-bright galaxies are hosted by massive dark matter haloes in overdense regions of the IGM, so reside in relatively large ionized regions.