A z ~ 5.7 Lyα Emission Line with an Ultra Broad Red Wing
Abstract
Using Lyα emission line as a tracer of high redshift star forming galaxies, hundreds of Lyα emission line galaxies (LAEs) at z > 5 have been detected. These LAEs are considered to be low mass young galaxies, critical to the reionization of the universe and the metal enrichment of circumgalactic medium (CGM) and intergalactic medium (IGM). It is assumed that outflows in LAEs can help ionizing photons and Lyα photons escape out of galaxies. However we still know little about the outflows in high redshifts LAEs due to observational difficulties, especially at redshift > 5. Models of Lyα radiative transfer predict asymmetric Lyα line profiles with broad red wing in LAEs with outflows. Here we report a z ~ 5.7 Lyα emission line with a broad red wing extending to > 1000 km/s relative to the peak of Lyα line, which has been detected in only a couple of z > 5 LAEs till now. If the broad red wing is ascribed to gas outflow instead of AGN activity, the outflow velocity could be larger than the escape velocity (~ 500 km/s) of typical halo mass of z ~ 5.7 LAEs, being consistent with the picture that outflows in LAEs disperse metals to CGM and IGM.
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