Galaxies Inside Stromgren Spheres of Luminous Quasars at z>6: Detection of The First Galaxies

Abstract

The intrinsic Lyman-alpha emission lines of normal galaxies before reionization are much absorbed by the damping wing of the Gunn-Peterson trough, rendering their direct detection nearly impossible, if their intrinsic line widths are less than ~100km/s. High redshift luminous quasars prior to the completion of cosmological reionization at z~6, on the other hand, are capable of producing large HII regions around them (Stromgren spheres) to allow their intrinsic Lyman-alpha emission lines to be transmitted without overwhelming absorption (Cen & Haiman 2000). We suggest that targeted observations at the Stromgren spheres of known luminous quasars at z >= 6 would be able to detect Lyman-alpha emission lines of galaxies inside the Stromgren spheres largely unattenuated. A tunable, very narrowband filter of Δλ\over λ~ 0.1% or a narrowband filter of Δλ\over λ~1% with follow-up spectroscopic identifications will be required. Such observations could directly observe the sources of cosmological reionization including possibly the Pop III galaxies at z=6-20 by JWST. Possible applications include determinations of the ionization state of the intergalactic medium, the sizes of the Stromgren spheres, the ages of the quasars, the luminosity function of high redshift galaxies and its evolution, the spatial distribution of galaxies and its evolution, the biased distribution of galaxies around quasars and the anisotropy of quasar emission. Observations using Keck-class telescopes may already be made to enable a differentiation between a fully neutral and a 10% neutral intergalactic medium at z>6.