Deep Learning the Intergalactic Medium using Lyman-alpha Forest at 4 ≤ z ≤ 5
arxiv(2024)
Abstract
Unveiling the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at 4 ≤ z
≤ 5 holds the potential to reveal early onset HeII reionization or
lingering thermal fluctuations from HI reionization. We set out to reconstruct
the IGM gas properties along simulated Lyman-alpha forest data on
pixel-by-pixel basis, employing deep Bayesian neural networks. Our approach
leverages the Sherwood-Relics simulation suite, consisting of diverse thermal
histories, to generate mock spectra. Our convolutional and residual networks
with likelihood metric predicts the Lyα optical depth-weighted density
or temperature for each pixel in the Lyα forest skewer. We find that our
network can successfully reproduce IGM conditions with high fidelity across
range of instrumental signal-to-noise. These predictions are subsequently
translated into the temperature-density plane, facilitating the derivation of
reliable constraints on thermal parameters. This allows us to estimate
temperature at mean cosmic density, T_ 0 with one sigma confidence
δ T_ 0∼ 1000 K using only one 20Mpc/h sightline (Δ
z≃ 0.04) with a typical reionization history. Existing studies utilize
redshift pathlength comparable to Δ z≃ 4 for similar constraints.
We can also provide more stringent constraints on the slope (1σ
confidence interval δγ≲ 0.1) of the IGM
temperature-density relation as compared to other traditional approaches. We
test the reconstruction on a single high signal-to-noise observed spectrum
(20 Mpc/h segment), and recover thermal parameters consistent with current
measurements. This machine learning approach has the potential to provide
accurate yet robust measurements of IGM thermal history at the redshifts in
question.
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