{"title":"POLARIZATION OF LYMAN α EMERGENT FROM A THICK SLAB OF NEUTRAL HYDROGEN","authors":"S. Ahn, Hee-Won Lee","doi":"10.5303/JKAS.2015.48.3.195","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Star forming galaxies found in the early universe exhibit asymmetric Lyα emission line that results from multiple scattering in a neutral thick medium surrounding the Lyα emission source. It is expected that emergent Lyα will be significantly polarized through a large number of resonance scattering events followed by a number of successive wing scatterings. In this study we adopt a Monte Carlo method to calculate the polarization of Lyα transferred in a very thick static slab of Hi. Resonantly scattered radiation associated with transitions between 1S½? 2P½ ,3/2 is only weakly polarized and therefore linear polarization of the emergent Lyα is mainly dependent on the number of off-resonant wing scattering events. The number of wing scattering events just before escape from the slab is determined by the product of the Doppler parameter a and the line center optical depth τ0, which, in turn, determines the behavior of the linear polarization of Lyα. This result is analogous to the study of polarized radiative transfer of Thomson scattered photons in an electron slab, where the emergent photons are polarized in the direction perpendicular to the slab when the scattering optical depth is small and polarized in the parallel direction when the slab is optically thick. Our simulated spectropolarimetry of Lyα shows that the line center is negligibly polarized, the near wing parts polarized in the direction parallel to the slab and the far wing parts are polarized in the direction perpendicular to the slab. We emphasize that the flip of polarization direction in the wing parts of Lyα naturally reflects the diffusive nature of the Lyα transfer process in thick neutral media.","PeriodicalId":49994,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Korean Astronomical Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2015-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"7","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of the Korean Astronomical Society","FirstCategoryId":"101","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5303/JKAS.2015.48.3.195","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 7
Abstract
Star forming galaxies found in the early universe exhibit asymmetric Lyα emission line that results from multiple scattering in a neutral thick medium surrounding the Lyα emission source. It is expected that emergent Lyα will be significantly polarized through a large number of resonance scattering events followed by a number of successive wing scatterings. In this study we adopt a Monte Carlo method to calculate the polarization of Lyα transferred in a very thick static slab of Hi. Resonantly scattered radiation associated with transitions between 1S½? 2P½ ,3/2 is only weakly polarized and therefore linear polarization of the emergent Lyα is mainly dependent on the number of off-resonant wing scattering events. The number of wing scattering events just before escape from the slab is determined by the product of the Doppler parameter a and the line center optical depth τ0, which, in turn, determines the behavior of the linear polarization of Lyα. This result is analogous to the study of polarized radiative transfer of Thomson scattered photons in an electron slab, where the emergent photons are polarized in the direction perpendicular to the slab when the scattering optical depth is small and polarized in the parallel direction when the slab is optically thick. Our simulated spectropolarimetry of Lyα shows that the line center is negligibly polarized, the near wing parts polarized in the direction parallel to the slab and the far wing parts are polarized in the direction perpendicular to the slab. We emphasize that the flip of polarization direction in the wing parts of Lyα naturally reflects the diffusive nature of the Lyα transfer process in thick neutral media.
期刊介绍:
JKAS is an international scientific journal publishing papers in all fields of astronomy and astrophysics. All manuscripts are subject to the scrutiny of referees. Manuscripts submitted to JKAS must comply with the ethics policy of JKAS. Six regular issues are published each year on February 28, April 30, June 30, August 31, October 31, and December 31. One year''s issues compose one volume.