Kavli Affiliate: Martin Haehnelt
| First 5 Authors: Louise Welsh, Louise Welsh, , ,
| Summary:
We aim to study the clustering of metal absorption lines and the structures
that they arise in as a function of cosmic time. We focus on C IV and Si IV
absorption features that are identified along a given quasar sightline. We
exploit the two-point correlation function (2PCF) to investigate the clustering
of these structures as a function of their separation. We utilise the E-XQR-30
data to perform a novel analysis at z>5. We also draw on literature surveys
(including XQ-100) of lower redshift quasars to investigate the possible
evolution of this clustering towards cosmic noon (i.e., z~2-3). We find no
significant evolution with redshift when considering the separation of
absorbers in velocity space. Since we are comparing data across a large
interval of cosmic time, we also consider the separation between absorbers in
the reference frame of physical distances. In this reference frame, we find
that the amplitude of the clustering increases with cosmic time for both C IV
and Si IV on the scales of <1500 physical kpc. For the first time, we assess
the 2PCF of C IV and Si IV close to the epoch of reionisation utilising the
absorber catalogue from the E-XQR-30 survey. We compare this with lower
redshift data and find that, on small scales, the clustering of these
structures grows with cosmic time. We compare these results to the clustering
of galaxies in the GAEA simulations. It appears that the structures traced by C
IV are broadly comparable to the galaxies from the considered simulations. The
clustering is most similar to that of the galaxies with virial masses M~10^10.5
M_sun. We require tailor-made simulations to investigate the full range of
factors contributing to the observed clustering. Future ground-based
spectrographs will further facilitate surveys of absorbers at this epoch with
increased sensitivity.
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