Jades: JADES: The emergence and evolution of Lyα emission and constraints on the intergalactic medium neutral fraction
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Author
Jones, Gareth C.
Bunker, Andrew J.
Saxena, Aayush
Witstok, Joris
Stark, Daniel P.
Arribas, Santiago
Baker, William M.
Bhatawdekar, Rachana
Bowler, Rebecca
Boyett, Kristan
Cameron, Alex J.
Carniani, Stefano
Charlot, Stephane
Chevallard, Jacopo
Curti, Mirko
Curtis-Lake, Emma
Eisenstein, Daniel J.
Hainline, Kevin
Hausen, Ryan
Ji, Zhiyuan
Johnson, Benjamin D.
Kumari, Nimisha
Looser, Tobias J.
Maiolino, Roberto
Maseda, Michael V.
Parlanti, Eleonora
Rix, Hans-Walter
Robertson, Brant E.
Sandles, Lester
Scholtz, Jan
Smit, Renske
Tacchella, Sandro
Ubler, Hannah
Willott, Chris
Attention
2299/28314
Abstract
The rest-frame UV recombination emission line Ly$\alpha$ can be powered by ionising photons from young massive stars in star forming galaxies, but its ability to be resonantly scattered by neutral gas complicates its interpretation. For reionization era galaxies, a neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) will scatter Ly$\alpha$ from the line of sight, making Ly$\alpha$ a useful probe of the neutral fraction evolution. Here, we explore Ly$\alpha$ in JWST/NIRSpec spectra from the ongoing JADES programme, which targets hundreds of galaxies in the well-studied GOODS-S and GOODS-N fields. These sources are UV-faint ($-20.45.6$ (as derived with optical lines) are fit with line and continuum models, in order to search for significant line emission. Through exploration of the R100 data, we find evidence for Ly$\alpha$ in 17 sources. This sample allows us to place observational constraints on the fraction of galaxies with Ly$\alpha$ emission in the redshift range $5.6