Related papers: Numerical simulations of the intergalactic medium
Ultraviolet and optical spectra of interstellar gas along the lines of sight to nearby stars have been interpreted by Redfield & Linsky (2008) and previous studies as a set of discrete warm, partially ionized clouds each with a different…
To underscore the value of high spectral resolution for the study of low-z QSO absorption lines, we briefly present Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph echelle data that demonstrate how increased resolution leads to dramatic improvement in…
Absorption or emission against the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) may be observed in the redshifted 21cm line if the spin temperature of the neutral intergalactic medium prior to reionization differs from the CMB temperature.…
Winds from star-forming galaxies provide the most promising explanation for the enrichment of the intergalactic medium with heavy elements. Theoretical and observational arguments indicate that the pollution may have occurred at z > 6;…
We present a new approach to constrain the spectral energy distribution of the intergalactic UV background observationally by studying metal absorption systems. We study single-component metal line systems exhibiting various well-measured…
We use hydrodynamic cosmological simulations in a 9.6 Mpc box to explore the evolution of the intergalactic medium (IGM) transmissivity from z=2 through the epoch of reionization. Reionization is achieved through an ultraviolet background…
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…
We study the observed small deviations of high-redshift absorption spectra that are interpreted as a possible evidence for a variable fine structure constant. On the contrary, we claim that the effect could be completely attributed to the…
The detection of a HeII absorption trough in the spectra of three high-redshift quasars provides new constraints on the spectral shape of the UV extragalactic background. The relative strengths of the observed flux decrements at the…
We simulate the flux emitted from galaxy halos in order to quantify the brightness of the circumgalactic medium (CGM). We use dedicated zoom-in cosmological simulations with the hydrodynamical Adaptive Mesh Refinement code RAMSES, which are…
Forming a three dimensional view of the Universe is a long-standing goal of astronomical observations, and one that becomes increasingly difficult at high redshift. In this paper we discuss how tomography of the intergalactic medium (IGM)…
We analyze high-resolution ultraviolet spectra of three nearby exoplanet host stars (HD 192310, HD 9826, and HD 206860) to study interstellar properties along their lines of sight and to search for the presence of astrospheric absorption.…
In hierarchical cosmogonies at redshift three the matter content of a typical present-day galaxy is dispersed over several individual clumps embedded in sheet-like structures, often aligned along filaments. We have used hydrodynamical…
We investigate the possibility of constraining the ionization state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) close to the end of reionization (z ~ 6) by measuring the size of the HII regions in high-z quasars spectra. We perform a combination of…
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) of typical galaxies is crucial to our understanding of the cycling of gas into, through and out of galaxies. One way to probe the CGM is to study gas around galaxies detected via the absorption lines they…
We study the properties of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of high-$z$ galaxies in the metal enrichment simulations presented in Pallottini et al. 2014. At $z=4$, we find that the simulated CGM gas density profiles are self-similar, once…
Quasar absorption lines provide detailed information on the chemical, kinematic, and ionization conditions in galaxies and their environments, and provide a means for studying the evolution of these conditions back to the epoch of the first…
A key assumption in quasar absorption line studies of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) is that each absorption component maps to a spatially isolated "cloud" structure that has single valued properties (e.g. density, temperature,…
The environment of high-redshift galaxies is characterized by both wind-driven outflowing gas and gravitationally infalling streams. To investigate such galaxy-IGM interplay we have generated synthetic optical absorption line spectra…
The spectral indexes distribution of a quasar sample is derived from a far-UV survey. A red average spectrum is found which comes in support of significant evolution of the QSO spectral energy distribution (SED) since $z\approx2.5$.