Title Sample variance and Lyman $\alpha$ forest transmission statistics Author Rollinde, E. Theuns, T. Schaye, J. Paris, I. Petitjean, P. Faculty/Department Faculty of Sciences. Physics Publication type article Publication 2013 Oxford , 2013 Subject Physics Source (journal) Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - Oxford Volume/pages 428(2013) :1 , p. 540-550 ISSN 0035-8711 ISI 000318227900052 Carrier E Target language English (eng) Full text (Publishers DOI) Affiliation University of Antwerp Abstract We compare the observed probability distribution function (PDF) of the transmission in the HI Lyman alpha forest, measured from the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) 'Large Programme' sample at redshifts z = [2, 2.5, 3], to results from the GIMIC cosmological simulations. Our measured values for the mean transmission and its PDF are in good agreement with published results. Errors on statistics measured from high-resolution data are typically estimated using bootstrap or jackknife resampling techniques after splitting the spectra into chunks. We demonstrate that these methods tend to underestimate the sample variance unless the chunk size is much larger than is commonly the case. We therefore estimate the sample variance from the simulations. We conclude that observed and simulated transmission statistics are in good agreement; in particular, we do not require the temperature-density relation to be 'inverted'. E-info https://repository.uantwerpen.be/docman/iruaauth/a124a9/ce53835.pdf http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000318227900052&DestLinkType=RelatedRecords&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=ef845e08c439e550330acc77c7d2d848 http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000318227900052&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=ef845e08c439e550330acc77c7d2d848 http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000318227900052&DestLinkType=CitingArticles&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=ef845e08c439e550330acc77c7d2d848 Handle