Kochel
Cosmic Lyman Alpha
Workshop

Hydrogen Lyman alpha (Lyα) is a crucial tool in astrophysics because it is a prominent emission and absorption line. Due to its resonance nature, the gas properties of both ionized and neutral media are imprinted on observed Lyα.

Understanding Lyα is important to study star formation, cold gas properties, cosmic baryon, and the epoch of reionization. The advent of novel telescopes and instruments allows us to obtain more information from Lyα, for example, spatially extended emission around galaxies, high-resolution spectral profile, and polarization.

This workshop is intended to bring researchers together to discuss how to decode and understand the infromation encoded in the Lyα line.

The key questions to be addressed include (but are not limited to):

○ How does Lyman alpha emission or absorption provide information about the density, temperature, and composition of the medium within and surrounding galaxies and well as the large-scale structure of the Universe?
○ How does Lyman alpha emission contribute to our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, including the role it plays in tracing star formation and gas dynamics?
○ What role does Lyman alpha play in our understanding of the process and sources of cosmic reionization, and how can it help reveal the history of the ionization state of the universe?
○ How do radiative transfer processes affect the Lyman alpha observables and vice-versa how do Lyman alpha photons affect the state of the scattering medium, and what insights can be gained by modeling and understanding these processes?