• 10 December 2003
Abstract
Gravitational instability induces a simple correlation between the large and small scale fluctuations of the Ly-alpha flux spectrum. However, non-gravitational processes involved in structure formation and evolution will alter such a correlation. In this paper we explore how scatter in the temperature-density relation of the IGM reduces the gravitationally induced scale-scale correlation. Since observations of the correlation are close to that predicted by pure gravity, this puts constraints on the scatter in the temperature-density relation and in turn on any physical process which would lead to scatter, e.g., strong fluctuations in the UV background or radiative transfer effects.

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