| The Polarization of Scattered Lyman Alpha Radiation Around High-Redshift Galaxies (2007) | |||||||||
Abstract | |||||||||
| The high-redshift Universe contains luminous Lyman Alpha (hereafter Lya) emitting sources such as galaxies and quasars. The emitted Lya radiation is often scattered by surrounding neutral hydrogen atoms. We show that the scattered Lya radiation obtains a high level of polarization for a wide range of likely environments of high-redshift galaxies. For example, the back-scattered Lya flux observed from galaxies surrounded by a superwind-driven outflow may reach a fractional polarization as high as ~40%. Equal levels of polarization may be observed from neutral collapsing protogalaxies. Resonant scattering in the diffuse intergalactic medium typically results in a lower polarization amplitude (. Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, matches version published in MNRAS. Discussion on polarization dependence of phase function added in Appendix | |||||||||
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