A Survey of Hot Gas in the Universe
Abstract
A large fraction of the baryons and most of the metals in the Universe are unaccounted for. They likely lie in extended galaxy halos, galaxy groups, and the cosmic web, and measuring their nature is essential to understanding galaxy formation. These environments have virial temperatures >10^5.5 K, so the gas should be visible in X-rays. Here we show the breakthrough capabilities of grating spectrometers to 1) detect these reservoirs of hidden metals and mass, and 2) quantify hot gas flows, turbulence, and rotation around the Milky Way and external galaxies. Grating spectrometers are essential instruments for future X-ray missions, and existing technologies provide 50-1500-fold higher throughput compared to current orbiting instruments.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1903.11630,
title = {A Survey of Hot Gas in the Universe},
author = {Joel N. Bregman and Edmund Hodges-Kluck and Benjamin D. Oppenheimer and Laura Brenneman and Juna Kollmeier and Jiangtao Li and Andrew Ptak and Randall Smith and Pasquale Temi and Alexey Vikhlinin and Nastasha Wijers},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.11630},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal (6 pages, 5 figures)