A new measurement of the mean transmitted flux in the Ly α and Ly β forest

We present new measurements of the mean transmitted flux in the hydrogen and a relative transmitted flux measurement in using 27 008 quasar spectra from the Fourteenth Data Release (DR14) of the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. Individual spectra are first combined into 16 composites with mean redshifts in the range of. We then apply Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) inference to produce a piecewise fit of the effective (corrected for metal lines and optically thick absorption) assuming a spline point distribution. We also perform a relative measurement with the same data set, finding at. The 6-8 per cent precision measurements in the rest frame 1075-1150 Å at and 10-12 per cent precision measurements in the same region at on, and our determinations of, are dominated by systematic errors, likely arising from bias and uncertainties in estimates of the quasar continuum. Our values show a smooth increase by a factor of 5 over the redshift range.