相关论文: Carbon ionization states and the cosmic far-UV bac…
Observations suggest that CII was more abundant than CIV in the intergalactic medium towards the end of the hydrogen reionization epoch. This transition provides a unique opportunity to study the enrichment history of intergalactic gas and…
Using radiative transfer calculations and cosmological simulations of structure formation, we study constraints that can be placed on the nature of the cosmic ultraviolet (UV) background in the redshift interval 2.5< z <5. Our approach…
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…
The ionizing background determines the ionization balance and the thermodynamics of the cosmic gas. It is therefore a fundamental ingredient to theoretical and empirical studies of both the IGM and galaxy formation. We present here a new…
We present measurements of the large-scale (~40 comoving Mpc) effective optical depth of HeII Ly$\alpha$ absorption, $\tau_{\rm eff}$, at 2.54<z<3.86 toward 16 HeII-transparent quasars observed with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) on…
We present an updated model of the cosmic ionizing background from the UV to the X-rays. Relative to our previous model (Faucher-Giguere et al. 2009), the new model provides a better match to a large number of up-to-date empirical…
Cosmic ultraviolet background radiation between 3 and 4 Ryd is reprocessed by resonant line absorption in the Lyman series of intergalactic He II. This process results in a sawtooth modulation of the radiation spectrum from the He II Lya…
Absorption due to HeII Ly-alpha has been detected at low resolution in the spectra of four quasars between redshifts z = 2.74-3.29. We assess these observations, giving particular attention to the radiative transfer of the ionizing…
A computational procedure is presented to estimate the spectral shape of the ionizing background between 1 and 10 Ryd by analyzing optically thin absorption systems in the spectra of high redshift quasars. The procedure is based on the…
We report the discovery of a further line of sight allowing detection of HeII Ly alpha absorption by the intergalactic medium. A HST/STIS survey of 32 bright z ~ 3 quasars selected from the Hamburg Quasar Surveys yielded one detection…
The estimate of the ionizing UV background through the proximity effect analysis is discussed. Taking into account the correct bending of the column density distribution which appears in high resolution high s/n data, a value of the UV…
In preparation of a study of the HeII/HI ratio towards the bright QSO HS1700+6416, we predict the metal line content of the far-UV spectral range by modelling 18 metal absorption line systems with redshifts 0.2<z<2.6 identified in the…
The low density hydrogen and helium in the IGM probed by QSO absorption lines is sensitive to the amplitude and spectral shape of the metagalactic UV background. We use realistic HI and HeII Ly-alpha forest spectra, constructed from…
Recent measurements of Si IV/C IV ratios in the high-redshift Ly-alpha forest (Songaila & Cowie, AJ, 112, 335 [1996a]; Savaglio et al., A&A, in press [1997]) have opened a new window on chemical enrichment and the first generations of…
We present a theoretical study of intergalactic metal absorption lines imprinted in the spectra of distant quasars during and after the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). We use high resolution hydrodynamical simulations at high redshift ($4…
This paper presents ionization-corrected measurements of the carbon abundance in intergalactic gas at 4.0 < z < 4.5, using spectra of three bright quasars obtained with the MIKE spectrograph on Magellan. By measuring the CIV strength in a…
Spatial inhomogeneities in the spectral shape of the ultra-violet background (UVB) at the tail-end of HeII reionisation are thought to be the primary cause of the large fluctuations observed in the HeII to HI Ly-a forest optical depth…
We present an observational test of the spectrum of the ionizing background at z~5; the test is sufficiently sensitive to determine whether Pop II or Pop III stars are the dominant source of ionizing radiation. The ionizing background at…
We implement a treatment of Helium {\sc ii} absorption and re-emission into the \TD cosmological simulations to study its impact on the metagalactic ultraviolet background (UVB) in three dimensions. By comparing simulations with and without…
The large number of quasars found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has allowed searches for elusive, clear lines of sight towards HeII Ly-alpha absorption, a sensitive probe of the intergalactic medium. The few known systems indicate that…