Spectral shapes of the Ly α emission from galaxies – II. The influence of stellar properties and nebular conditions on the emergent Ly α profiles

We demonstrate how the stellar and nebular conditions in star-forming galaxies modulate the emission and spectral profile of HI Lya emission line. We examine the net Lya output, kinematics, and in particular emission of blue-shifted Lya radiation, using spectroscopy from with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on HST, giving a sample of 87 galaxies at redshift z=0.05-0.44. We contrast the Lya spectral measurements with properties of the ionized gas (from optical spectra) and stars (from stellar modeling). We demonstrate correlations of unprecedented strength between the Lya escape fraction (and equivalent width) and the ionization parameter (p~10^-15). The relative contribution of blue-shifted emission to the total Lya also increases from ~0 to ~40% over the range of O_32 ratios (p~10^-6). We also find particularly strong correlations with estimators of stellar age and nebular abundance, and weaker correlations regarding thermodynamic variables. Low ionization stage absorption lines suggest the Lya emission and line profile are predominantly governed by the column of absorbing gas near zero velocity. Simultaneous multi-parametric analysis over many variables shows we can predict 80% of the variance on Lya luminosity, and ~50% on the EW. We determine the most crucial predictive variables, finding that for tracers of the ionization state and Hb luminosity dominate the luminosity prediction whereas the Lya EW is best predicted by Hb EW and the Ha/Hb ratio. We discuss our results with reference to high redshift observations, focussing upon the use of Lya to probe the nebular conditions in high-z galaxies and cosmic reionization.
Comment: Accepted by MNRAS. 27 pages and 19 figures. ~90 online-only Figures are available here: https://ttt.astro.su.se/~mhaye/t/onlineonly_resub.pdf