Sample variance and Lyman α forest transmission statistics

Rollinde, E.; Theuns, T.; Schaye, J.; Pâris, I.; Petitjean, P.

Abstract

We compare the observed probability distribution function (PDF) of the transmission in the H i Lyman α forest, measured from the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) ‘Large Programme’ sample at redshifts z = [2, 2.5, 3], to results from the gimic cosmological simulations. Our measured values for the mean transmission and its PDF are in good agreement with published results. Errors on statistics measured from high-resolution data are typically estimated using bootstrap or jackknife resampling techniques after splitting the spectra into chunks. We demonstrate that these methods tend to underestimate the sample variance unless the chunk size is much larger than is commonly the case. We therefore estimate the sample variance from the simulations. We conclude that observed and simulated transmission statistics are in good agreement; in particular, we do not require the temperature–density relation to be ‘inverted’.

Citation

Rollinde, E., Theuns, T., Schaye, J., Pâris, I., & Petitjean, P. (2013). Sample variance and Lyman α forest transmission statistics. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 428(1), 540-550. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sts057

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2013
• Deposit Date: Dec 4, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 28, 2015
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2966
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 428
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 540-550
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sts057
• Keywords: Methods: numerical, Galaxies: intergalactic medium, Cosmology: theory.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1418976
• Related Public URLs: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013MNRAS.428..540R