Related papers: Constraints from the Lyman alpha forest power spec…
Non-thermalized dark matter is a cosmologically viable alternative to the widely studied weakly interacting massive particle. We study the evolution of the dark matter phase-space distributions arising from freeze-in and superWIMP…
We combine the Ly-alpha forest power spectrum (LYA) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and high resolution spectra with cosmic microwave background (CMB) including 3-year WMAP, and supernovae (SN) and galaxy clustering constraints to…
We develop a method to extract the "effective equation of state" of the intergalactic medium from the doppler b parameter distribution of the low-density Lyman-alpha forest. We test the method on numerical simulations and then apply it to…
It has been realised only recently that TeV emission from blazars can significantly heat the intergalactic medium (IGM) by pair-producing high-energy electrons and positrons, which in turn excite vigorous plasma instabilities, leading to a…
The sky-averaged (global) 21-cm signal is a powerful probe of the intergalactic medium (IGM) prior to the completion of reionization. However, it has so far been unclear that even in the best case scenario, in which the signal is accurately…
A large fraction of the baryonic matter in the Universe is located in filaments in the intergalactic medium. However, the low surface brightness of these filaments has not yet allowed their direct detection except in very special regions in…
Gravitational instability induces a simple correlation between the large and small scale fluctuations of the Ly-alpha flux spectrum. However, non-gravitational processes involved in structure formation and evolution will alter such a…
Winds from pregalactic starbursts and 'miniquasars' may pollute the IGM with metals and raise its temperature to a high adiabat, and so inhibit the formation of early galaxies. We compute the thermal history of the IGM when it experiences a…
We study the temperature structure of the intergalactic medium (IGM) using a large cosmological N-body/SPH simulation. We employ a two-temperature model for the thermal evolution of the ionized gas, in which the relaxation process between…
Recent cosmological tensions have rekindled the search for models beyond $\Lambda$CDM that cause a suppression of the matter power spectrum. Due to the small scales accessible to Lyman-$\alpha$ data they are an excellent additional tool to…
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…
Dark matter (DM) from freeze-in or superWIMP production is well known to imprint non-cold DM signatures on cosmological observables. We derive constraints from Lyman-$\alpha$ forest observations for both cases, basing ourselves on a…
The flux power spectrum of the high resolution Lyman-$\alpha$ forest data exhibits suppression at small scales. The origin of this suppression can be due to long-sought warm dark matter (WDM) or to thermal effects, related to the largely…
We present a new method to infer parameters of the temperature-density relation in the intergalactic medium in the post-reionization epoch at $z\sim 2-4$. This method is based on the analysis of the Ly$\alpha$ absorbers distribution over…
We analyze the flux power spectrum and its covariance using simulated Lyman alpha forests. We find that pseudo-hydro techniques are good approximations of hydrodynamical simulations at high redshift. However, the pseudo-hydro techniques…
At redshifts z >~ 2, most of the baryons reside in the smooth intergalactic medium which is responsible for the low column density Lyman-alpha forest. This photoheated gas follows a tight temperature-density relation which introduces a…
Many models of early structure formation predict a period of heating immediately preceding reionization, when X-rays raise the gas temperature above that of the cosmic microwave background. These X-rays are often assumed to heat the…
We use an automated Voigt-profile fitting procedure to extract statistical properties of the Ly$\alpha$ forest in a numerical simulation of an $\Omega=1$, cold dark matter (CDM) universe. Our analysis method is similar to that used in most…
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 characterise the thermal state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in ten redshift bins in the redshift range $2 \leq z \leq 4$ with a sample of 103 high resolution, high S/N Ly$\alpha$ forest spectra using four different flux distribution…