Indirect Evidence for Escaping Ionizing Photons in Local Lyman Break Galaxy Analogs

Abstract: A population of early star-forming galaxies is the leading candidate for the re-ionization of the universe. It is still unclear what conditions and physical processes would enable a significant fraction of the ionizing photons to escape from these gas-rich galaxies. In this paper we present the results of the analysis of HST COS far-UV spectroscopy plus ancillary multi-waveband data of a sample of 22 low-redshift galaxies that are good analogs to typical star-forming galaxies at high-redshift. We measure three parameters that provide indirect evidence of the escape of ionizing radiation: (1) the residual intensity in the cores of saturated interstellar low-ionization absorption-lines. (2) The relative amount of blue-shifted Lyman alpha line emission, and (3) the relative weakness of the [SII] optical emission lines. We use these diagnostics to rank-order our sample in terms of likely leakiness, noting that a direct measure of escaping Lyman continuum has recently been made for one of the leakiest members of our sample. We then examine the correlations between our ranking and other proposed diagnostics of leakiness and find a correlation with the equivalent width of the Lyman alpha emission-line. Turning to galaxy properties, we find the strongest correlations with leakiness are with the compactness of the star-forming region and the speed of the galactic outflow. This suggests that extreme feedback- a high intensity of ionizing radiation and strong pressure from both radiation and a hot galactic wind- combines to create significant holes in the neutral gas. These results not only shed new light on the physical mechanisms that can allow ionizing radiation to escape from intensely star-forming galaxies, they also provide indirect observational indicators that can be used at high-redshift where direct measurements of escaping Lyman continuum radiation are impossible.