We present a study of an extended Lyman-alpha (Lya) nebula located in a known overdensity at z~2.38. The data include multiwavelength photometry covering the rest-frame spectral range from 0.1 to 250um, and deep optical spectra of the sources associa
ted with the extended emission. Two galaxies are associated with the Lya nebula. One of them is a dust enshrouded AGN, while the other is a powerful starburst, forming stars at >~600 Msol/yr. We detect the HeII emission line at 1640A in the spectrum of the obscured AGN, but detect no emission from other highly ionized metals (CIV or NV) as is expected from an AGN. One scenario that simultaneously reproduces the width of the detected emission lines, the lack of CIV emission, and the geometry of the emitting gas, is that the HeII and the Lya emission are the result of cooling gas that is being accreted on the dark matter halo of the two galaxies, Ly1 and Ly2. Given the complexity of the environment associated with our Lya nebula it is possible that various mechanisms of excitation are at work simultaneously.
We present the optical spectroscopic follow-up of 31 z=0.3 Lyman-alpha (Lya) emitters, previously identified by Deharveng et al. (2008). We find that 17% of the Lya emitters have line ratios that require the hard ionizing continuum produced by an AGN
. The uniform dust screen geometry traditionally used in studies similar to ours is not able to simultaneously reproduce the observed high Lya/Halpha and Halpha/Hbeta line ratios. We consider different possibilities for the geometry of the dust around the emitting sources. We find that also a uniform mixture of sources and dust does not reproduce the observed line ratios. Instead, these are well reproduced by a clumpy dust screen. This more realistic treatment of the geometry results in extinction corrected (Lya/Halpha)_C values consistent with Case B recombination theory, whereas a uniform dust screen model would imply values (Lya/Halpha)_C higher than 8.7. Our analysis shows that there is no need to invoke ad-hoc multi phase media in which the Lya photons only scatter between the dusty clouds and eventually escape.
