1998/12/16 by Lam Hui, Hui, Lam
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #CCD and CMOS Imaging Sensors #FOS: Physical sciences #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9812293
To appear in the proceedings of the MPA/ESO Conference "Evolution of Large Scale Structure", Garching, August 1998, 9 pages
arxiv created 1998/12/16 · openalex publication_date 1998/12/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In recent years, a remarkably simple physical picture of the Lyman-alpha forest has emerged, which allows detailed predictions to be made and turns the forest into a powerful probe of cosmology. We point out ways in which such a picture can be tested observationally, and explore three areas in which the Lyman-alpha forest can yield valuable constraints: the reionization history, the primordial mass power spectrum and the cosmological constant or its variants. The possibility of combining with other high redshift observations, such as the Lyman-break galaxy surveys, to provide consistency checks and complementary information is also discussed.