A tomographic map of the large-scale matter distribution using the eBOSS—Stripe 82 Lyα forest

Abstract

The Lyman-α (hereafter Lyα) forest is a probe of large-scale matter density fluctuations at high redshift, z > 2.1. It consists of H I absorption spectra along individual lines-of-sight. If the line-of-sight density is large enough, 3D maps of H I absorption can be inferred by tomographic reconstruction. In this article, we investigate the Lyα forest available in the Stripe 82 field (220 deg2), based on the quasar spectra from SDSS Data Release DR16. The density of observed quasar spectra is 37 deg−2 with a mean pixel signal-to-noise ratio of two per angstrom. This study provides an intermediate case between the average SDSS density and that of the much denser but smaller CLAMATO survey. We derive a 3D map of large-scale matter fluctuations from these data, using a Wiener filter technique. The total volume of the map is 0.94 h−3 Gpc3. Its resolution is 13 h−1 Mpc, which is related to the mean transverse distance between nearest lines-of-sight. From this map, we provide a catalog of voids and protocluster candidates in the cosmic web. The map-making and void catalog are compared to simulated eBOSS Stripe 82 observations. A stack over quasar positions provides a visualization of the Lyα forest-quasar cross-correlation. This tomographic reconstruction constitutes the largest-volume high-redshift 3D map of matter fluctuations.