The Lyman α forest in a truncated hierarchical structure formation |
| |
| Authors: | Adi Nusser Ofer Lahav |
| |
| Institution: | Physics Department, The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel; Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA; Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel |
| |
| Abstract: | The Lyman α forest provides important constraints on the smoothness of the Universe on large scales. We calculate the flux distribution along the line of sight to quasars in a universe made of randomly distributed clumps, each of them with a Rayleigh–L'evy fractal structure with dimension D <2. We consider the probability distribution function of the normalized flux in the line of sight to quasars. We illustrate that the truncated clustering hierarchy model with D <2 shows far too many voids along the line of sight to quasars compared with the observed flux distribution and the distribution in a cold dark matter model. This supports the common view that on large scales the Universe is homogeneous, rather than fractal-like. |
| |
| Keywords: | intergalactic medium quasars: absorption lines cosmology: observations cosmology: theory dark matter large-scale structure of Universe |
|
|
