1996/09/06 by Romeel Davé, Davé, Romeel, Lars Hernquist +5
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Calibration and Measurement Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Satellite Image Processing and Photogrammetry #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9609060
4 pages, LaTex, to appear in "Proceedings of the IAGUSP Workshop on Young Galaxies and QSO Absorbers" (Santos, Brazil, April 1996)
arxiv created 1996/09/06 · openalex publication_date 1996/09/06 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We use an automated Voigt-profile fitting procedure to extract statistical properties of the Lyα forest in a numerical simulation of an Ω=1, cold dark matter (CDM) universe. Our analysis method is similar to that used in most observational studies of the forest, and we compare the simulations to recently published results derived from Keck HIRES spectra. With the Voigt-profile decomposition analysis, the simulation reproduces the large number of weak lines (N\rm HI\la 1014 cm-2) found in the HIRES spectra. At z=3, the b-parameter distribution has a median of 35\kms and a dispersion of 20\kms, in reasonable agreement with the observed values. The comparison between our new analysis and recent data strengthens earlier claims that the Lyalpha forest arises naturally in hierarchical structure formation as photoionized gas falls into dark matter potential wells.