The role of galaxies and AGN in reionizing the IGM - III. IGM-galaxy cross-correlations at z ~ 6 from eight quasar fields with DEIMOS and MUSE

Abstract

We present improved results of the measurement of the correlation between galaxies and the intergalactic medium transmission at the end of reionization. We have gathered a sample of 13 spectroscopically confirmed Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs) and 21 Lyman-α emitters (LAEs) at angular separations 20 arcsec ≤ θ ≤ 10 arcmin (~0.1-4 pMpc at z ~ 6) from the sightlines to eight background z ≥ 6 quasars. We report for the first time the detection of an excess of Lyman-α transmission spikes at ~10-60 cMpc from LAEs (3.2σ) and LBGs (1.9σ).We interpret the datawith an improvedmodel of the galaxy-Lyman-α transmission and two-point cross-correlations, which includes the enhanced photoionization due to clustered faint sources, enhanced gas densities around the central bright objects and spatial variations of the mean free path. The observed LAE(LBG)-Lyman-α transmission spike two-point cross-correlation function (2PCCF) constrains the luminosity-averaged escape fraction of all galaxies contributing to reionization to (fesc)MUV -20 (2σ)) is necessary to reproduce the observed 2PCCF and that reionizationmight be driven by different sub-populations around LBGs and LAEs at z ~ 6.