Related papers: 3D Spatial Distribution of the Intergalactic Mediu…
We present a new method for probing the physical conditions and metal enrichment of the Intergalactic Medium: the composite spectrum of Ly-alpha forest absorbers. We apply this technique to a sample of 9480 Ly-alpha absorbers with redshift…
The matter density field at $z\sim 6$ is very challenging to probe. One of the traditional probes of the low density IGM that works successfully at lower redshifts is the Lyman-alpha forest in quasar spectra. However, at the end of…
The distribution of the absorption line broadening observed in the Ly$\alpha$ forest carries information about the temperature and widths of the filaments in the intergalactic medium (IGM). In this work, we present and test a new method for…
The remarkable efficiency of the UVES spectrograph at the VLT has made it possible to push high-resolution, high-S/N ground observations of the Ly-a forest down to z~1.5, gaining new insight into the physical conditions of the intergalactic…
We report a scaling of the mean matter density with the width of the saturated Lyman alpha absorptions. This property is established using the ``pseudo-hydro'' technique (Croft et al. 1998). It provides a constraint for the inversion of the…
We study the three-dimensional distribution of non virialised matter at z~2 using high resolution spectra of QSO pairs and simulated spectra drawn from cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. We have collected the largest sample of QSO…
The distribution of diffuse gas in the intergalactic medium (IGM) imprints a series of hydrogen absorption lines on the spectra of distant background quasars known as the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest. Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations…
The evolution of the temperature in the intergalactic medium is related to the reionization of hydrogen and helium, and has important consequences for our understanding of the Lya forest and of galaxy formation in gravitational models of…
Visualizing the high-redshift Universe is difficult due to the dearth of available data; however, the Lyman-alpha forest provides a means to map the intergalactic medium at redshifts not accessible to large galaxy surveys. Large-scale…
We present high S/N echelle spectra of the recently discovered ultraluminous QSO APM 08279+5255 and use these data to re-examine the abundance of Carbon in Ly alpha forest clouds. In agreement with previous work, we find that approximately…
The Lyman-$\alpha$ forest refers to the series of absorption features observed in the spectra of distant quasars that are produced by neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium. Observed over a wide range of redshifts with both ground-…
We examine the statistics of the low-redshift Ly-alpha forest in an adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic cosmological simulation of sufficient volume to include distinct large-scale environments. We compare our HI column density…
Unveiling the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at $4 \leq z \leq 5$ holds the potential to reveal early onset HeII reionization or lingering thermal fluctuations from HI reionization. We set out to reconstruct the IGM gas…
We study the clustering of matter in the intergalactic medium from the Lyman-alpha forests seen in the spectra of pairs or groups of z ~ 2 quasars observed with FORS2 and UVES at the VLT-UT2 Kueyen ESO telescope. The sample consists of five…
(Abridged) I investigate statistical properties of one-dimensional fields in the universe such as the Lyman alpha forest and inverted line-of-sight densities. Because of gravitational clustering, the cosmic density field is already quite…
The distribution of absorption lines in the spectra of distant quasars, called the Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly-$\alpha$) forest, is a unique probe of cosmology and the intergalactic medium at high redshifts and small scales. The statistical power of…
We use the probability distribution function (PDF) of the lya forest flux at z=2-3, measured from high-resolution UVES/VLT data, and hydrodynamical simulations to obtain constraints on cosmological parameters and the thermal state of the…
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…
We investigate a method to determine the temperature-density relation of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at z~2-4 using quasar absorption line systems. Using a simple model combined with numerical simulations we show that there is a lower…
We estimate the He II to H I column density ratio, \eta = N(He II)/N(H I), in the intergalactic medium towards the high redshift (z_{em} = 2.885) bright quasar QSO HE 2347-4342 using Voigt-profile fitting of the H I transitions in the Lyman…