Kavli Affiliate: Nickolay Y. Gnedin
| First 5 Authors: Jiawen Fan, Hanjue Zhu, Camille Avestruz, Nickolay Y. Gnedin,
| Summary:
Lyman Limit Systems (LLSs) are dense hydrogen clouds with high enough HI
column densities ($N_{rm HI}$) to absorb Lyman continuum photons emitted from
distant quasars. Their high column densities imply an origin in dense
environments; however, the statistics and distribution of LLSs at high
redshifts still remain uncertain. In this paper, we use self-consistent
radiative transfer cosmological simulations from the "Cosmic Reionization On
Computers" (CROC) project to study the physical properties of LLSs at the tail
end of cosmic reionization at $zsim6$. We generate 3000 synthetic quasar
sightlines to obtain a large number of LLS samples in the simulations. In
addition, with the high physical fidelity and resolution of CROC, we are able
to quantify the association between these LLS samples and nearby galaxies. Our
results show that a higher fraction of higher column density LLSs are spatially
associated with nearby galaxies. Moreover, we find that LLSs that are not near
any galaxy typically reside in filamentary structures connecting neighboring
galaxies in the intergalactic medium (IGM). This quantification of the
distribution and associations of LLSs to large scale structures informs our
understanding of the IGM-galaxy connection during the Epoch of Reionization,
and provides a theoretical basis for interpreting future observations.
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