Related papers: On the intergalactic temperature-density relation
We study the heating time in periodically driven $D$-dimensional systems with interactions that decay with the distance $r$ as a power-law $1/r^\alpha$. Using linear response theory, we show that the heating time is exponentially long as a…
During reionization, the intergalactic medium is heated impulsively by supersonic ionization fronts (I-fronts). The peak gas temperatures behind the I-fronts, $T_\mathrm{reion}$, are a key uncertainty in models of the thermal history after…
We explore the impact of spatial fluctuations in the intergalactic medium temperature on the Lyman-alpha forest flux power spectrum near z ~ 3. We develop a semianalytic model to examine temperature fluctuations resulting from inhomogeneous…
The recent measurement by WMAP of a large electron scattering optical depth tau_e = 0.17 +- 0.04 is consistent with a simple model of reionization in which the intergalactic medium (IGM) is ionized at redshift z ~ 15, and remains highly…
The intergalactic medium (IGM) prior to the epoch of reionization consists mostly of neutral hydrogen gas. Ly-alpha photons produced by early stars resonantly scatter off hydrogen atoms, causing energy exchange between the radiation field…
It has been recently shown that the astrophysics of reionization can be extracted from the Ly$\alpha$ forest power spectrum by marginalizing the memory of reionization over cosmological information. This impact of cosmic reionization on the…
Recent observations of the Lyman-alpha forest show large-scale spatial variations in the intergalactic Lyman-alpha opacity that grow rapidly with redshift at z>5, far in excess of expectations from empirically motivated models. Previous…
Using N-body/hydrodynamic simulations, the influence of non-equipartition processes on the thermal and dynamical properties of cosmological baryonic gas is investigated. We focus on a possible departure from equilibrium between electrons,…
If dark matter decays to electromagnetically-interacting particles, it can inject energy into the baryonic gas and thus affect the processes of recombination and reionization. This leaves an imprint on the cosmic microwave background (CMB):…
Weakly interacting massive particles are part of the lepton-photon plasma in the early universe until kinetic decoupling, after which time the particles behave like a collisionless gas with nonzero temperature. The Boltzmann equation for…
We decompose the Lyman-{\alpha} (Ly{\alpha}) forest of an extensive sample of 74 high signal-to-noise ratio and high-resolution quasar spectra into a collection of Voigt profiles. Absorbers located near caustics in the peculiar velocity…
For non-relativistic thermal dark matter, close-to-threshold effects largely dominate the evolution of the number density for most of the times after thermal freeze-out, and hence affect the cosmological relic density. A precise evaluation…
We analyse the evolution of the Intergalactic Medium (IGM) by means of an extended set of large box size hydrodynamical simulations which include pre-heating. We focus on the properties of the z~2 Lyman-alpha forest and on the population of…
We study the constraints which the next generation of radio telescopes could place on the nature of dark energy, dark matter and inflation by studying the gravitational lensing of high redshift 21 cm emission, and we compare with the…
Dark matter constitutes the great majority of the matter content in the Universe, but its microscopic nature remains an intriguing mystery, with profound implications for particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Here we shed light on…
Cosmological simulations with gas provide a detailed description of the intergalactic medium, making possible predictions of neutral hydrogen absorption in the spectra of background QSOs. We present results from a high-resolution…
We use the existing catalog of Damped Lyman-Alpha (DLA) systems to place constraints on the amount of evolution in the baryonic content of galaxies and on the value of the cosmological constant. The density of cold gas at redshifts z=3+-1…
The relationship between magnetic field strength and gas density is essential to understand the interstellar medium and star formation. Zeeman measurements in dense atomic and molecular gas phases have traditionally been used to directly…
We discuss the thermodynamic and dynamical properties of a variable dark energy model with density scaling as $\rho_x \propto (1+z)^{m}$, z being the redshift. These models lead to the creation/disruption of matter and radiation, which…
(abridged) We present an effective implementation of analytical calculations of the Lyalpha opacity distribution of the Intergalactic Medium (IGM) along multiple lines of sight (LOS) to distant quasars in a cosmological setting. This method…