A population of ultraviolet-dim protoclusters detected in absorption.

Autor: Newman AB; Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, CA, USA. anewman@carnegiescience.edu., Rudie GC; Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, CA, USA., Blanc GA; Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, CA, USA.; Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Las Condes, Chile., Qezlou M; Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, CA, USA.; Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA., Bird S; Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA., Kelson DD; Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, CA, USA., Pérez V; Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Las Condes, Chile., Congiu E; Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Las Condes, Chile., Lemaux BC; Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA.; Gemini Observatory, NSF's NOIRLab, Hilo, HI, USA., Dressler A; Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, CA, USA., Mulchaey JS; Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, CA, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Nature [Nature] 2022 Jun; Vol. 606 (7914), pp. 475-478. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Jun 15.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04681-6
Abstrakt: Galaxy protoclusters, which will eventually grow into the massive clusters we see in the local Universe, are usually traced by locating overdensities of galaxies 1 . Large spectroscopic surveys of distant galaxies now exist, but their sensitivity depends mainly on a galaxy's star-formation activity and dust content rather than its mass. Tracers of massive protoclusters that do not rely on their galaxy constituents are therefore needed. Here we report observations of Lyman-α absorption in the spectra of a dense grid of background galaxies 2,3 , which we use to locate a substantial number of candidate protoclusters at redshifts 2.2 to 2.8 through their intergalactic gas. We find that the structures producing the most absorption, most of which were previously unknown, contain surprisingly few galaxies compared with the dark-matter content of their analogues in cosmological simulations 4,5 . Nearly all of the structures are expected to be protoclusters, and we infer that half of their expected galaxy members are missing from our survey because they are unusually dim at rest-frame ultraviolet wavelengths. We attribute this to an unexpectedly strong and early influence of the protocluster environment 6,7 on the evolution of these galaxies that reduced their star formation or increased their dust content.
(© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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