# The Ly𝛼 forest in a truncated hierarchical structure formation

## 1 Introduction

The underlying paradigm in cosmology is the Cosmological Principle of isotropy and homogeneity (e.g. Peebles 1993). This principle was adopted at the time that observational data on the large scale structure in the universe were not available. At present it is well established that the distribution of galaxies and mass are clumpy on scales smaller than tens of Mpcs. It is important therefore to quantify the gradual transition from clumpiness to homogeneity. This transition can be phrased in terms of the fractal dimension of the galaxy (or mass) distributions. The fractal dimension, $`D`$, is defined as

$$N(<R)R^D,$$
(1)   
where $`N`$ is the mean number of objects within a sphere of radius $`R`$ centered on a randomly selected object. On scales $`<10h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ the fractal dimension of the galaxy distribution is $`D=1.2`$, but the fluctuations in the X-ray Background and in the Cosmic Microwave Background on scales larger than $`300h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ are consistent with $`D=3`$ to very high precision (e.g. Peebles 1980; Wu, Lahav & Rees 1999) in agreement with the Cosmological Principle. On the other hand, there are claims (e.g. Pietronero, Montuori & Sylos-Labini 1997) that the distribution of galaxies is characterized by a fractal with $`D=2\pm 0.2`$ all the way to scales of $`500h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$. Because of the significance of this issue, it is important to investigate other independent probes of the matter distribution in the universe. Here we attempt to set constraints on the smoothness on large scales from the distribution of the normalized flux in the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest in the lines-of-sight to distant quasars. As a probe to the matter distribution the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest has a number of advantages over galaxies. The forest reflects the neutral hydrogen (HI) distribution and therefore is likely to be a more direct trace of the mass distribution than galaxies are, especially in low density regions. Unlike galaxy surveys which are limited to the low redshift universe, the forest spans a large redshift interval, typically $`2.2<z<4`$, corresponding to comoving interval of $`600h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$. Also, observations of the forest are not contaminated by complex selection effects such as those inherent in galaxy surveys. It has been suggested qualitatively by Davis (1997) that the absence of big voids in the distribution of Ly$`\alpha `$ absorbers is inconsistent with the fractal model (see also, Wu et al. 1999). Furthermore, all lines-of-sight towards quasars look statistically similar. Here we predict the distribution of the flux in Ly$`\alpha `$ observations in a specific truncated fractal-like model. We find that indeed in this model there are too many voids compared with the observations and conventional models for structure formation.

The outline of the paper is as follows. In section 2 we describe the truncated clustering hierarchy (TCH) model for the distribution of dark matter. In section 3 we briefly review the physics of the Ly$`\alpha `$ and describe how to obtain HI density field from the dark matter distribution. In section 4 we show the results for the probability distribution function of the flux. In section 5 we conclude with a summary and a general discussion.

## 2 the dark matter distribution

We consider a dark matter model that is based on a fractal-like distribution of points. There are many candidates for this type of models. Here we will focus on one of the most studied of these models, namely the Rayleigh-L’evy (RL) walk (Mandelbrot 1977, Peebles 1980, 1993). As we will see later, our analysis relies on rather general fractal properties, so we do not expect our conclusions to depend on the details of the fractal model. Our main conclusion is that a fractal distribution of matter with $`D<2`$ is inevitably characterized by large voids, which is inconsistent with observations of the flux in the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest. In practice we will use the TCH model in which the distribution of matter is made of a finite number of Rayleigh-L’evy clumps, each with a finite number of steps (points). This model obviously does not have as many big voids as the pure fractal distribution. Therefore, if we demonstrate that the TCH already contains far too many large voids to be compatible with Ly$`\alpha `$ data then we can safely rule out a pure fractal distribution on the same basis.

In the TCH model, the dark matter distribution in a large volume is represented by a finite number of points. The points are distributed in $`n_c`$ clumps each made of $`n_s`$ steps (points) so that the total number of points in the volume is $`n_cn_s`$. The clumps are randomly placed inside the volume and the distribution of points in each clump is generated from a Rayleigh-L’evy random walk (e.g. Peebles 1980) in which the individual steps have random directions, and random lengths drawn according to the following cumulative probability function

$`P(>l)`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{l}{l_0}}\right)^\alpha \mathrm{f}orll_0`$   
$`1\mathrm{o}therwise`$   
For $`\alpha >2`$ the variance of $`l`$ is finite. Therefore, by the central limit theorem, the displacement of a point after sufficiently large number of steps has a Gaussian distribution. On the other hand, for $`\alpha 2`$ the variance is infinite and the clump follows a truncated fractal structure where a pure fractal with dimension $`D=\alpha `$ is obtained only in the limit of an infinite number of steps. In figure 1 we show a projection in the plane of a realization of a three dimensional single RL clump generated using 160000 points and $`\alpha =D=1.2`$. The clump is viewed at three different magnifications.

On scales smaller than the typical length of RL clump in the volume, the TCH model shares many of the properties of a pure fractal. However, in the TCH model the mean number density of points on large scales is well defined. This allows e.g. statistical description of the distribution of points in terms of the two-point correlation function (Peebles 1980).

## 3 The Ly$`\alpha `$ forest and the dark matter connection

Absorption spectra are presented in terms of the normalised flux $`F=\mathrm{exp}(\tau )`$ where $`\tau `$ is the optical depth which is related to the HI density, $`n_{_{\mathrm{HI}}}`$, along the line-of-sight by

$$\tau (w)=\sigma _0\frac{c}{H(z)}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}n_{_{\mathrm{HI}}}(x)[wx,b(x)]dx,$$
(3)   
where $`\sigma _0`$ is the effective cross section for resonant line scattering, $`H(z)`$ is the Hubble constant at redshift $`z`$, $`x`$ is the real space coordinate (in km s<sup>-1</sup>), $``$ is the Voigt profile normalized and $`b(x)`$ is the Doppler parameter due to thermal/turbulent broadening. For simplicity we have neglected the effect of peculiar velocities. In Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models, the absorption features in the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest are mainly produced by regions of moderate densities where photoheating is the dominant heating source. Because hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) is highly ionized (Gunn & Peterson 1965), the photoionization equilibrium in the expanding IGM establishes a tight correlation between neutral and total hydrogen density, $`n__\mathrm{H}`$. This can be approximated by a power law $`n_{_{\mathrm{HI}}}n__\mathrm{H}^\beta `$, where $`1.56\beta 2`$ (Hui & Gnedin 1997). Numerical simulations have shown (e.g. Zhang et al. 1995) that the total hydrogen density traces the mass fluctuations on scales larger than the Jeans length. So, ionization equilibrium yields the following relation for the HI density, $`n_{_{\mathrm{HI}}}`$,

$$n_{_{\mathrm{HI}}}=\widehat{n}_{_{\mathrm{HI}}}\left[1+\delta (𝐱)\right]^\beta ,$$
(4)   
where $`\delta =\rho /\overline{\rho }1`$ is the mass density contrast, $`\overline{\rho }`$ is the mean background mass density, and $`\widehat{n}_{_{\mathrm{HI}}}`$ is the HI density at $`\delta =0`$. The gas density is obtained by smoothing the dark matter distribution with the following smoothing window in $`k`$-space (Bi 1993),

$$W(k)=\frac{1}{1+\left(\frac{k}{k_J}\right)^2},$$
(5)   
where $`2\pi /k_J`$ is the Jeans scale length which is $`1h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ (comoving) at $`z3`$. We approximate the the gas density field by the dark matter distribution smoothed with the window (5).

## 4 The flux probability distribution function

As can be seen in Fig 1 a pure RL fractal realization with fractal dimension $`D<2`$ leaves most of space empty. If the neutral hydrogen traces faithfully the dark matter distribution then most of the lines-of-sights to hypothetical quasars will experience zero optical depth and hence will have $`F=1`$. This is very different from what is observed in the real universe, where the mean fluxes $`F`$ are e.g. $`0.6`$ at $`z3`$. We show below that even if we consider the THC model and adjust it so that the observed value of mean flux is reproduced, the shape of the flux probability distribution function (PDF) towards a single quasar significantly differs from the observed PDF.

To make this comparison we use two observed high resolution spectra of the QSO 1442+231, from z=3.6 (the redshift of the QSO) to z=2.9 (the redshift of Ly$`\beta `$). This redshift range corresponds to a comoving separation of $`250h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ in a flat $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ universe. The spectra were observed by Songalia & Cowie (1996) and Rauch et. al. (1997). Since the distribution is a fractal, we can arbitrarily identify the length of the box with the redshift interval $`z=2.93.6`$ towards the quasar.

We have generated $`50`$ RL clumps each containing $`160000`$ points, for $`\alpha =1.2`$ and $`1.8`$, respectively. The clumps were placed randomly in a cubic box of size unity where $`l_0=7\times 10^5`$ and $`10^3`$ for $`\alpha =1.2`$ and $`1.8`$, respectively. This values of $`l_0`$ were chosen to be much smaller than the mean separation between particles, and to yield clumps of roughly equal size in the two values of $`\alpha `$. We use the clouds-in-cells (CIC) scheme to interpolate the point dark matter distribution in the TCH model to a uniform cubic grid. Then we use FFT to convolve the gridded density with the window (5). In the TCH model, the actual value of the smoothing scale length is not important as long as it is smaller than the typical size of the clumps and the mean separation between them. We use the relations (3) and (4) with $`\beta =1.7`$ to compute the optical depth and the normalized flux from the smoothed dark matter density field in random lines-of-sight through the box. For the comparison with the data, we adjust $`\widehat{n}_{_{\mathrm{HI}}}`$ in eq. ( 4) so that the mean flux $`F`$ matches the observed value of $`0.65`$ over the redshift range $`z=2.93.6`$ for QSO1442+231 (Rauch et al 1997).

In figures (2) and (3) we compare the models’ results with two observed high resolution spectra of the QSO 1422. The error bars on the PDF from the TCH model are rough estimates of the cosmic variance. In deriving these error bars we had to fix a physical scale for the box size. We fix this scale by requiring the mass correlation function at $`z3`$ to be unity at separation $`1h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ as inferred by extrapolating the the local galaxy correlation function (e.g., Peacock & Dodds 1994) to $`z3`$ in a flat universe $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$. Once we have fixed a physical scale, we can estimate the cosmic variance for a portion of the quasar spectrum of of length equal to the one dimensional box size. For comparison we show the PDF corresponding to a lognormal $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ standard CDM mass distribution normalised to match the abundance of rich clusters in the local universe (Eke et. al. 1996). The CDM model is clearly a much better fit to the data than the TCH model.

## 5 Discussion

The Ly$`\alpha `$ forest is likely to be a better tracer of the mass density than galaxies and therefore serves as a better probe of the density fluctuations at low and high redshifts. We have shown that the RL fractal models (pure as well as truncated) fail to reproduce the flux distribution of the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest. The main reason for this discrepancy is that these models have low fractal dimension ($`D<2`$) and are charactarised by large empty regions (i.e. high level of ‘lacunarity’). In contrast, models with fluctuations declining with increasing scale-lengths and approaching uniformity on horizon scale (e.g. CDM) are consistent with the observed flux distribution. This result from the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest is in line with constraints on the smoothness of the universe on large scales from the X-Ray and Microwave Background Radiations, and from the distribution of radio sources . Another potential measurement of the large scale smoothness on scales of $`500h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ from the Ly$`\alpha `$ forest, which we have not addressed here in detail, can be obtained from the fluctuations in the mean flux in multiple lines-of-sight to QSOs.

## 6 acknowledgment

AN thanks the Astronomy department of UC Berkeley, the Institute of Astronomy and St. Catharine’s College Cambridge for the hospitality and support. OL acknowledges the hospitality of the Technion. We thank L. Cowie and M. Rauch for allowing the use of their data. We are grateful to M.Davis, M.Haehnelt and M.Rees for stimulating discussions.