Related papers: Cosmic Minivoids in the Intergalactic Medium
Over the past decade, Lyman-alpha and metal line absorption observations have established the ubiquity of a gas-rich circumgalactic medium (CGM) around star-forming galaxies at z~0.2 potentially tracing half of the missing baryonic mass…
We have derived the column densities of heavy elements in three gamma-ray burst (GRB) optical transients, associated with the circumburst or interstellar medium (ISM) of the host galaxy. In comparison with the same elements observed in…
We present a set of ultra-large particle-mesh simulations of the LyA forest targeted at understanding the imprint of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the inter-galactic medium. We use 9 dark matter only simulations which can, for the…
The cosmic ultraviolet background (UVB) heats the intergalactic medium (IGM), as a result the gas in dark matter halos below a certain mass is too hot to cool within a Hubble time. The UVB effectively suppresses the formation of dwarf…
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) produce a dominant fraction (~80%) of the Soft X-ray background (SXB) at photon energies 0.5<E<2 keV. If dust pervaded throughout the intergalactic medium, its scattering opacity would have produced diffuse…
The Hot Universe Baryon Surveyor (HUBS) mission is proposed to study "missing" baryons in the universe. Unlike dark matter, baryonic matter is made of elements in the periodic table, and can be directly observed through the electromagnetic…
We perform a systematic study of how the inhomogeneities in the Inter-Galactic Medium (IGM) affect the observability of Lyman Alpha Emitters (LAEs) around the Epoch of Reionization. We focus on the IGM close to the galaxies as the detailed…
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…
Big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies independently predict the universal baryon density. Comparing their predictions will provide a fundamental test on cosmology. Using BBN and the CMB…
Modern cosmology predicts that matter in our Universe has assembled today into a vast network of filamentary structures colloquially termed the Cosmic Web. Because this matter is either electromagnetically invisible (i.e., dark) or too…
The similar densities of dark matter and baryons in the universe imply that they might arise from the same ultraviolet model. The B-Mesogenesis, which assumes dark matter is charged under the baryon number, attempts to simultaneously…
The first sources of ionizing radiation to condense out of the dark and neutral IGM sent ionization fronts sweeping outward through their surroundings, overtaking other condensed objects and photoevaporating them. This feedback effect of…
The recent Boomerang and MAXIMA data on the cosmic microwave background suggest a large value for the baryonic matter density of the universe, omega_b = 0.03. This density is larger than allowed by standard big bang nucleosynthesis theory…
Recent years have seen major advances in understanding the state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at high redshift. Some aspects of this understanding are reviewed here. In particular, we discuss: (1) Different probes of IGM like…
Recent suggestions of a "photon underproduction crisis" (Kollmeier \etal\ 2014) have generated concern over the intensity and spectrum of ionizing photons in the metagalactic ultraviolet background (UVB). The balance of hydrogen…
Numerical hydrodynamical simulations have proven a successful means of reproducing many of the statistical properties of the LyA forest as measured in high redshift (z > 4) quasar spectra. The source of ionization of the Intergalactic…
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…
The BBN predictions for the abundances of the light element isotopes is reviewed and compared with recent observational data. The single unknown parameter of standard BBN is the baryon-to-photon ratio, \eta, and can be determined by the…
Minimal scenarios with light (sub-GeV) dark matter whose relic density is obtained from thermal freeze-out must include new light mediators. In particular, a very well-motivated case is that of a new "dark" massive vector gauge boson…
We calculate the impact of the intergalactic medium (IGM) on the observed Lyman alpha lines (hereafter Lya) emitted by galaxies in an ionised IGM at z>4. Our model accounts for gas clumping in the IGM and for the fact that high-redshift…