Abstract: ABSTRACT We present the first characterization of the circumgalactic medium of Ly α emitters (LAEs), using a sample of 96 z ≈ 3.3 LAEs detected with the VLT/MUSE in fields centred on eight bright background quasars. The LAEs have low Ly α luminosities ($\sim 10^{42}\, \text{erg}\, \text{s}^{-1}$) and star formation rates (SFRs) $\sim 1~\text{M}_\odot \, \text{yr}^{-1}$, which for main-sequence galaxies correspond to stellar masses of only $\sim 10^{8.6}\, \text{M}_\odot$. The median transverse distance between the LAEs and the quasar sightl...
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Topics: 
Astrophysics