Abstract
Theoretical models of reionization require that approximately 10% of the Lyman Continumm (LyC) photons escape from their host dark matter haloes and re-ionize neutral hydrogen in the Universe. However, observations of Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at z~3 report much lower escape fractions of $f_{esc}{\sim}1%$. In an attempt to understand the discrepancy, we perform radiation-hydrodynamics simulations of isolated disk galaxies using RAMSES-RT with high resolution (maximum ~ 9 pc). We find that $f_{esc}$ is ~6% on average for the reference run ($Z=0.1Z{\odot}$), whereas the fraction decreases to ~1% in the case of metal-rich disk ($Z=1Z{\odot}$). This happens because dense metal-poor gas clumps are disrupted early due to strong Lya pressure and supernova explosions, while star particles are trapped for a longer period of time in the metal-rich environments. We also find that $f_{esc}$ is still significant (~4%) even when the amount of metal-poor gas is increased by a factor of 5. Our preliminary results suggest that the low escape fractions in LBGs may be better explained by (locally) metal-enriched gas near young stars than high gas fractions in galaxies.