Evidence of a cosmological Strömgren surface and of significant neutral hydrogen surrounding the Quasar SDSS J1030+0524

摘要: A bright quasar residing in a dense and largely neutral intergalactic medium at high redshifts (z 6) will be surrounded by large cosmological Stromgren sphere. The quasar's spectrum then show sharp increase resonant Lyman line absorption wavelengths approaching shorter than that corresponding to the sphere's boundary along of sight. We here simultaneously considering measured two or more hydrogen lines can provide dynamical range required detect this feature. model broad robust features Lyα Lyβ regions z = 6.28 SDSS J1030+0524, using hydrodynamical simulation. From steep wavelength dependence inferred opacity, we sphere proper distance 6.0 ± 0.2 Mpc away from source redshift. alone, also find beyond distance, cosmic turns nearly neutral, with fraction x 0.2, ionizing luminosity is (5.2 2.5) × 1056 photons s-1. method presented here, when applied future quasars, probe complex topology overlapping ionized used study details reionization process.