Detecting Preheating in Protoclusters with Lyα Forest Tomography

Abstract

Abstract Studies of low-redshift galaxy clusters suggest the intracluster medium (ICM) has experienced nongravitational heating during the formation phase of the clusters. Using simple phenomenological heating prescriptions, we simulate the effect of this preheating of the nascent ICM in galaxy protoclusters and examine its effect on Lyα forest tomographic maps. We analyze a series of cosmological zoom-in simulations of protoclusters within the framework of the Lyα transmission−dark matter (DM) density distribution. We find that the more energy is injected into the proto-ICM at z = 3, the more the distribution at high DM density tilts toward higher Lyα transmission. This effect has been confirmed in both low-resolution simulations adopting a preheating scheme based on entropy floors, as well as in higher-resolution simulations with another scheme based on energy floors. The evolution of the slope of this distribution is shown to vary with redshift. The methodology developed here can be applied to current and upcoming Lyα forest tomographic survey data to help constrain feedback models in galaxy protoclusters.