Related papers: A Lower Bound on the Cosmic Baryon Density
We study the proximity effect in the Ly-a forest around high redshift quasars as a function of redshift and environment employing a set of 3D radiative transfer simulations. The analysis is based on dark matter only simulations at redshifts…
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…
We examine the Ly-alpha absorber population at z<0.3 detected in spectra of the QSOs PG0953+415 and H1821+643 taken with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. We compare their statistical properties to…
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…
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…
The warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) at temperatures 1E5-1E7 K is believed to contain 30-50% of the baryons in the local universe. However, all current X-ray detections of the WHIM at redshifts z>0 are of low statistical significance…
Estimates of the deuterium abundance in quasar absorbers are reviewed, including a brief account of incorrect claims published by the author and a brief review of the problem of hydrogen contamination. It is concluded that the primordial…
We present an estimate of the global budget of baryons in all states, with conservative estimates of the uncertainties, based on all relevant information we have been able to marshal. Most of the baryons today are still in the form of…
The correlation of weak lensing and Cosmic Microwave Anisotropy (CMB) data traces the pressure distribution of the hot, ionized gas and the underlying matter density field. The measured correlation is dominated by baryons residing in halos.…
We have constructed a sample of 29 close projected quasar pairs where the background quasar spectrum reveals absorption from optically thick HI gas associated with the foreground quasar. These unique sightlines allow us to study the quasar…
We present a method for studying the proximity effect and the density structure around redshift z=2-3 quasars. It is based on the probability distribution of Lyman-alpha pixel optical depths and its evolution with redshift. We validate the…
Galaxy formation depends critically on the physical state of gas in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) and its interface with the intergalactic medium (IGM), determined by the complex interplay between inflows from the IGM and outflows from…
The average rate of emission of ionizing radiation per unit volume (or emissivity) in the universe can be calculated as the ratio of the intensity of the ionizing background to the mean free path of ionizing photons. The intensity of the…
Conservation of the phase-space density of photons plus Lorentz invariance requires that the cosmological luminosity distance be larger than the angular diameter distance by a factor of $(1+z)^2$, where $z$ is the redshift. Because this is…
Observations of the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) have the potential to answer long-standing questions of astrophysical interest regarding the nature of the first luminous sources and their effects on the intergalactic medium (IGM). We…
[Abridged] We test the accuracy of different models of the attenuation of light due to resonant scattering by intergalactic neutral hydrogen by comparing their predictions of the evolution of the mean cosmic flux decrement, D_A, to…
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…
We study the properties of X-ray galaxy clusters in four cold dark matter models with different baryon fraction $\Omega_{BM}$ ranging from 5 to 20 per cent. By using an original three-dimensional hydrodynamic code based on the piecewise…
Most baryonic matter resides in the intergalactic medium (IGM), a diffuse gas primarily composed of ionized hydrogen and helium, filling the space between galaxies. Observations of such an environment are crucial to better understanding the…
The thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium (IGM) can serve as a sensitive probe of cosmological heat sources and sinks. We employ it to limit interactions between dark matter and baryons. After reionization the IGM temperature is set…