Polarization of the Lyman alpha line from an anisotropically expanding H~I shell in primeval galaxies

Abstract

We compute the polarization of the Lyman alpha line photons emerging from an anisotropically expanding and optically thick medium, which is expected to operate in many Lyman alpha emitting objects including the primeval galaxy DLA~2233+131 and Lyman break galaxies. In the case of a highly optically thick medium, the escape of resonance line photons is achieved by a large number of resonant local scatterings followed by a small number of scatterings in the damping wing. We show that some polarization can develop because the wing scatterings are coupled with strong spatial diffusion which depends on the scattering geometry and kinematics. The case of a slab with a finite scattering optical depth and expansion velocity of ~ 100 kms^{-1} is investigated and it is found that Lyman alpha photons are emergent with the linear degree of polarization up to 10% when the typical scattering optical depth tau>=10^5. We subsequently investigate the polarization of Lyman alpha photons emerging from a spherical shell obscured partially by an opaque component and we obtain ~ 5 % of polarization. It is proposed that a positive detection of polarized Lyman alpha with with P-Cygni type profile from cosmological objects can be a strong test of the expanding shell structure obscured by a disk-like component.