Related papers: Exploring the intergalactic medium with VLT/UVES
Numerical simulations indicate that the smooth, photoionized intergalactic medium (IGM) responsible for the low column density Lyman-alpha forest follows a well defined temperature-density relation. We show that such an equation of state…
The low-redshift Ly-alpha forest of absorption lines provides a probe of large-scale baryonic structures in the intergalactic medium, some of which may be remnants of physical conditions set up during the epoch of galaxy formation. We…
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…
Observations of redshifted Lyman alpha forest absorption in the spectra of quasistellar objects (QSOs) provide a highly sensitive probe of the distribution of gaseous matter in the universe. Over the past two decades optical spectroscopy…
We discuss the origin and physical nature of the Lya forest absorption systems as found in hydrodynamical simulations of the Intergalactic Medium in a standard Cold Dark Matter cosmology (Omega=1, H0=50 km/s/Mpc, sigma_8=0.7). The…
We investigate the implications of the intergalactic opacity for the evolution of the cosmic UV luminosity density and its sources. Our main constraint is our measurement of the Lya forest opacity at redshifts 2<z<4.2 from 86…
We study the physical conditions in DLAs, using a sample of 33 systems toward 26 QSOs acquired for a recently completed survey of H_2 by Ledoux et al. (2003). We use the column densities of H_2 in different rotational levels, together with…
Using high resolution (R ~ 45000), high S/N (20-50) VLT/UVES observations covering the Lyman-alpha forest at 1.5 < z < 2.4 combined with similar observations at z > 2.4 from the literature, we have presented the redshift evolution of the…
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…
[Abbreviated] Rest-frame UV emission lines probe physical parameters of the emitting star-forming galaxies and their environments. The strongest main UV line, Ly$\alpha$, has been instrumental in advancing the general knowledge of galaxy…
We compare the improved measurement of the Lya forest flux probability distribution at 1.7<z<3.2 presented by Kim et al. (2007) to a large set of hydrodynamical simulations of the Lya forest with different cosmological parameters and…
We present the first comprehensive evolutionary analysis of the rest-frame UV spectroscopic properties of star-forming galaxies at z ~ 2-4. We match samples at different redshifts in UV luminosity and stellar mass, and perform systematic…
There has been great progress in recent years in discovering star forming galaxies at high redshifts (z>5), close to the epoch of reionization of the intergalactic medium (IGM). The WFC3 and ACS cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope have…
I present a review by epoch of baryons in the intergalactic medium (IGM), from the first star until today. Recent observations indicate a protracted period of reionization, suggesting multiple populations of reionizers; detection of these…
Reionization is an inhomogeneous process, thought to begin in small ionized bubbles of the intergalactic medium (IGM) around overdense regions of galaxies. Recent Lyman-alpha (Ly$\alpha$) studies during the epoch of reionization show…
We selected a sample of 76 Lya emitting galaxies from the VIMOS Ultra Deep Survey (VUDS) at 2<z<4. We estimated the velocity of the neutral gas flowing out of the interstellar medium as the velocity offset, Deltav, between the systemic…
We briefly discuss the relevance of Lyman alpha forest observations for measuring cosmological parameters, comparing the properties of high z QSO spectra with those of artifical spectra from hydrodynamic simulations, based on hierarchical…
According to the photo-heating model of the intergalactic medium (IGM), He II reionization is expected to affect its thermal evolution. Evidence for additional energy injection into the IGM has been found at $3\lesssim z\lesssim4$, though…
The low-redshift evolution of the intergalactic medium is investigated using hydrodynamic cosmological simulations. The assumed cosmological model is a critical density cold dark matter universe. The imposed uniform background of ionizing…
In this work, I investigate the properties of Lyman limit systems (LLSs) using state-of-the-art zoom-in cosmological galaxy formation simulations with on the fly radiative transfer, which includes both the cosmic UV background (UVB) and…