Related papers: X-Ray IGM in the Local Group
The reionization of hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) is a crucial landmark in the history of the universe, but the processes through which it occurs remain mysterious. In particular, recent numerical and analytic work suggest that…
Observations with the Swift satellite of X-ray afterglows of more than a hundred gamma ray bursts (GRBs) with known redshift reveal ubiquitous soft X-ray absorption. The directly measured optical depth \tau at a given observed energy is…
We compiled a sample of 95 AGNs serendipitously detected in the 3-20 keV band at Galactic latitude |b|>10 during the RXTE slew survey (XSS, Revnivtsev et al.), and utilize it to study the statistical properties of the local population of…
We present the results of a pilot XMM-$Newton$ and $Chandra$ program aimed at studying the diffuse intragroup medium (DIM) of optically-selected nearby groups from the Zurinch ENvironmental Study (ZENS) catalog. The groups are in a narrow…
The luminous infrared-loud quasar IRAS 13349+2438 was observed with the XMM-Newton Observatory as part of the Performance Verification program. The spectrum obtained by the Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) exhibits broad (v ~ 1400 km/s…
Accurate atomic transition data are important in many astronomical research areas especially in line spectroscopy study. Whereas transition data of He-like and H-like ions (i.e., ions at high-charge states) are accurately calculated, that…
We have analyzed all available archival XMM-Newton observations of X Comae, a bright X-ray quasar behind the Coma cluster, to study the properties of the warm-hot intergalactic medium in the vicinity of the nearest massive galaxy cluster.…
We characterize the properties of the intergalactic medium (IGM) around a sample of galaxies extracted from state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulations of structure formation in a cosmological volume of 25 Mpc comoving at $z\sim 2$. The…
Aim of this work is a broad-band study with INTEGRAL, Swift and XMM-Newton satellites of a sample of 9 blazars (7 FSRQ and 2 BL Lac) with redshift up to about 4. The spectral analysis has shown clear evidence of a flattening of the…
The hard X-ray sensitivity and arcminute position accuracy of the recently launched International Gamma-Ray Laboratory (INTEGRAL) has lead to the (re-)discovery of a class of heavily absorbed hard X-ray sources lying in the Galactic plane.…
We observed the Seyfert I active galaxy/broad line radio galaxy 3C120 with the Chandra high energy transmission gratings and present an analysis of the soft X-ray spectrum. We identify the strongest absorption feature (detected at >99.9%…
We provide an in-depth analysis of the He II and H I absorption in the intergalactic medium (IGM) at redshifts z = 2.3-2.9 toward HE 2347-4342, using spectra from the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) and the Ultraviolet-Visual…
Intervening HI 21-cm absorption systems at z > 1.0 are very rare and only 4 confirmed detections have been reported in the literature. Despite their scarcity, they provide interesting and unique insights into the physical conditions in the…
The circumgalactic medium (CGM) of nearby star-forming galaxies show clear indications of \ion{O}{6} absorption accompanied by little to no \ion{N}{5} absorption. This unusual spectral signature, accompanied by absorption from lower…
A variety of independent observational studies have now reported a significant decline in the fraction of Lyman-break galaxies which exhibit Ly-a emission over the redshift interval z=6-7. In combination with the strong damping wing…
We investigate the feasibility of detecting and probing various components of the ionized intergalactic medium (IGM) and their turbulent properties at radio frequencies through observations of scatter broadening of compact sources. There is…
We use a wide-field (0.9 square degree) X-ray sample with optical and GALEX ultraviolet observations to measure the contribution of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) to the ionizing flux as a function of redshift. Our analysis shows that the…
Observational studies indicate that the intergalactic medium (IGM) is highly ionized up to redshifts just over 6. A number of models have been developed to describe the process of reionization and the effects of the ionizing photons from…
We discuss the prospects for ``tomography'' of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at high redshifts using the 21 cm transition of neutral hydrogen. Existing observational constraints on the epoch of reionization imply a complex ionization…
By heating the intergalactic medium (IGM) before reionization, X-rays are expected to play a prominent role in the early Universe. The cosmic 21-cm signal from this "Epoch of Heating" (EoH) could serve as a clean probe of high-energy…