How do you find high energy photons when you can’t see them?

How do you find high energy photons when you can’t see them?

by | Aug 22, 2023 | Daily Paper Summaries

Title: Strong Lyman continuum emitting galaxies show intense C IV λ1550 emissionAuthors: D. Schaerer, Y. I. Izotov, et al.First Author’s Institution: Observatoire de Genève / Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et PlanétologieStatus: Published in Astronomy and Astrophysics [open access] This guest post was written by Riley Owens, a postbaccalaureate researcher between groups at the American University of Sharjah, the University of Cincinnati, and West Virginia University. His research interests are broad, but focus upon the impact of massive stars throughout time. In his free time, he enjoys playing with his dog and long phone calls with friends. IntroductionIn the history of our universe, the period of reionization represents a remaining gap in our knowledge. During this time, the very first massive stars and quasars formed out of the then-neutral content of the universe and ionized this material.But how did that ionizing radiation (called Lyman continuum; LyC) escape those galaxies? Strangely, LyC doesn’t escape more recent galaxies enough to explain how ionized our universe appears. This suggests a significant evolution in galaxies between now and reionization.Unfortunately, directly observing LyC from reionization is serendipitous at best, since the increasing neutrality of the universe at higher redshifts rapidly attenuates LyC.One way astronomers are trying to resolve this dilemma is by observing the LyC emitters which do exist in the nearer universe, in order to identify quantities which correlate with LyC escape. Understanding the astrophysics of these quantities helps to explain the conditions leading to LyC escape, but also what astronomers could look for in reionization galaxies to infer how much LyC escapes from them and how. ObservationsIn today’s paper, astronomers observed the...