Related papers: Diffuse baryonic matter beyond 2020
Galaxy clusters are the largest and most massive bound objects resulting from cosmic hierarchical structure formation. Baryons account for somewhat more than 10% of that mass, with roughly 90% of the baryonic matter distributed throughout…
As the nodes of the cosmic web, clusters of galaxies trace the large-scale distribution of matter in the Universe. They are thus privileged sites in which to investigate the complex physics of structure formation. However, the complete…
The large scale structure of the present Universe is determined by the growth of dark matter density fluctuations and by the dynamical action of dark energy and dark matter. While much progress has been made in recent years in constraining…
Clusters of galaxies, the largest collapsed structures in the Universe, are located at the intersection of extended filaments of baryons and dark matter. Cosmological accretion onto clusters through large scale filaments adds material at…
Clusters of galaxies are used in a variety of ways to do cosmology. Some of them are presented here. Their X-ray emitting gas allows us to determine the baryon fraction, dark matter distribution and the matter density $\Omega_{m}$ of the…
Groups and clusters of galaxies occupy a special position in the hierarchy of large-scale cosmic structures because they are the largest and the most massive (from ~10^13 Msun to over 10^15 Msun) objects in the universe that have had time…
The hot circum-galactic medium (CGM) represents the hot gas distributed beyond the stellar content of the galaxies while typically within their dark matter halos. It serves as a depository of energy and metal-enriched materials from…
Clusters of galaxies can be seen as giant astrophysical laboratories enclosing matter in a large enough volume, so that the matter composition can be taken as representing the composition of our Universe. X-ray observations allow a very…
Studies of the diffuse X-ray emitting gas in galaxy clusters have provided powerful constraints on cosmological parameters and insights into plasma astrophysics. However, measurements of the faint cluster outskirts have become possible only…
Clusters of galaxies outline the network of the distribution of visible matter in the Universe, marking the highest-mass knots where filamentary structures join together. If we observe the sky in X rays, clusters of galaxies stand out as…
Clusters of galaxies are self-gravitating systems of mass ~10^14-10^15 Msun. They consist of dark matter (~80 %), hot diffuse intracluster plasma (< 20 %) and a small fraction of stars, dust, and cold gas, mostly locked in galaxies. In most…
The most successful cosmological models to date envision structure formation as a hierarchical process in which gravity is constantly drawing lumps of matter together to form increasingly larger structures. Clusters of galaxies currently…
Several popular cosmological models predict that most of the baryonic mass in the local universe is located in filamentary and sheet-like structures associated with galaxy overdensities. This gas is expected to be gravitationally heated to…
Most of the baryonic matter of the Universe resides in a highly-ionized gaseous intergalactic medium. This gas flows along dark-matter filaments toward galaxy superclusters, clusters, and groups until it pools around the galaxies into a…
Approximately half of the Universe's dark matter resides in collapsed halos; significantly less than half of the baryonic matter (protons and neutrons) remains confined to halos. A small fraction of baryons are in stars and the interstellar…
Clusters of galaxies are the most massive objects in the Universe and precise knowledge of their mass structure is important to understand the history of structure formation and constrain still unknown types of dark contents of the…
A definite prediction from recent N-body/hydro simulations of the structure formation of the universe is the presence of a diffuse intergalactic medium (IGM) in a temperature range of 10^5 - 10^7 K. This hot phase of the IGM may account for…
Most of the ordinary matter in the local Universe has not been converted into stars but resides in a largely unexplored diffuse, hot, X-ray emitting plasma. It pervades the gravitational potentials of massive galaxies, groups and clusters…
The Universe has evolved from an initial diffuse, uniform gas to a complex structure that includes both voids and high-density galaxy clusters connected by gaseous filaments, known as the Cosmic Web, and traced by 3D surveys of galaxies.…
The most massive baryonic component of galaxy clusters is the "intracluster medium" (ICM), a diffuse, hot, weakly magnetized plasma that is most easily observed in the X-ray band. Despite being observed for decades, the macroscopic…