Lyman-alpha as an Astrophysical and Cosmological Tool, 1st ed. 2019
Saas-Fee Advanced Course 46. Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy
Saas-Fee Advanced Course Series, Vol. 46

Authors:

Coordinators: Verhamme Anne, North Pierre, Cantalupo Sebastiano, Atek Hakim

Language: English

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Lyman-alpha as an Astrophysical and Cosmological Tool
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Lyman-Alpha as an Astrophysical and Cosmological Tool
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The hydrogen Lyman-alpha line is of utmost importance to many fields of astrophysics. This UV line being conveniently redshifted with distance to the visible and even near infrared wavelength ranges, it is observable from the ground, and provides the main observational window on the formation and evolution of high redshift galaxies. Absorbing systems that would otherwise go unnoticed are revealed through the Lyman-alpha forest, Lyman-limit, and damped Lyman-alpha systems, tracing the distribution of baryonic matter on large scales, and its chemical enrichment.

We are living an exciting epoch with the advent of new instruments and facilities, on board of satellites and on the ground. Wide field and very sensitive integral field spectrographs are becoming available on the ground, such as MUSE at the ESO VLT. The giant E-ELT and TMT telescopes will foster a quantum leap in sensitivity and both spatial and spectroscopic resolution, to the point of being able, perhaps, to measure directly the acceleration of the Hubble flow. In space, the JWST will open new possibilities to study the Lyman-alpha emission of primordial galaxies in the near infrared. As long as the Hubble Space Telescope will remain available, the UV-restframe properties of nearby galaxies will be accessible to our knowledge. Therefore, this Saas-Fee course appears very timely and should meet the interest of many young researchers.


Physics of Lya Radiative Transfer.- HI Absorption in the Intergalactic Medium.- Observations of Lya Emitters at High Redshift.- Lyman alpha Emission and Absorption in Local Galaxies.- Index.

 
Editors:

Dr. Anne Verhamme is Senior Research Assistant at the Astronomical Department of the University of Geneva and Associated Researcher at CRAL, Lyon. She works on spectral diagnostics to study the escape of ionising photons and gas flows around galaxies, at the interface between simulations (coupling her radiation transfer code with radiation hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation) and observations (as a member of the MUSE consortium, and the LARS collaboration). She currently works on new indirect methods to probe the escape of ionising photons from the sources of cosmic reionisation, in particular from their Lyman-alpha properties (spectral shape and/or extend of their Lya halos), with a newly developed radiation transfer code, RASCAS,  efficiently parallelised, and interfaced with state-of-the-art radiation hydrodynamic (RHD) simulations of galaxy formation. She obtained her PhD degree in Astronomy at the Univer
sity of Geneva in 2008, working on Lyman-alpha radiation transfer effects in galaxies. In 2009, she was an SNF fellow at the Astrophysics department of Oxford University, and from 2010 to 2012, she was a Marie Curie fellow at CRAL, in Lyon, to compute the Lyman-alpha properties of virtual galaxies. Since Sept 2012, she returned to the University of Geneva (Excellence Fellow of the University of Geneva for 3 years, and “Marie Heim Vogtlin” SNF Fellow).

Dr. Pierre North is senior researcher and lecturer at the Laboratory of Astrophysics of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He obtained his PhD degree in astronomy and astrophysics in 1984 at Geneva University. He worked on chemically peculiar stars, especially on the evolution of the angular momentum of magnetic Ap and Bp stars. He studied the rate and properties of binaries among this type of stars,  and also determined the orbital and spectral properties of Ba dwarfs, to the discovery of which he contrib

Fills a gap of graduate lecture books dedicated to this topic

Gathers state-of-the art theory and observations

Discusses main science case of several forthcoming facilities

Presents elaborated lecture notes of the 46th Saas-Fee Advanced Course