The Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium

By M. McQuinn. 2015

280 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The bulk of cosmic matter resides in a dilute reservoir that fills the space between galaxies, the intergalactic medium (IGM). The history of this reservoir is intimately tied to the cosmic histories of structure formation, star formation, and supermassive black hole accretion. Our models for the IGM at intermediate redshifts (2≲z≲5) are a tremendous success, quantitatively explaining the statistics of Lyα absorption of intergalactic hydrogen. However, at both lower and higher redshifts (and around galaxies) much is still unknown about the IGM. We review the theoretical models and measurements that form the basis for the modern understanding of the IGM, and we discuss unsolved puzzles (ranging from the largely unconstrained process of reionization at high z to the missing baryon problem at low z), highlighting the efforts that have the potential to solve them.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/12740e9121371725ede998a0e4d8d595a994d7a4

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

New Constraints on the free-streaming of warm dark matter from intermediate and small scale Lyman-$\alpha$ forest data (2017, methodology): “The intergalactic medium (IGM) and its main observable manifestation, the Lyman-α forest (see [1]), have been used as unique tools to address key cosmological issues: the free-streaming of dark matter and in particular departures from cold dark matter, generally labeled as warm dark matter (WDM) [2–”
The one-dimensional power spectrum from the SDSS DR14 Lyα forests (2018, background): “On scales of a few Mpc, the Lyα flux power spectrum is an excellent probe of the thermal properties of the photo-ionized warm intergalactic medium (IGM) [3–5].”
Small-Scale Challenges to the ΛCDM Paradigm (2017, background): “One potentially powerful probe at z ∼ 2 − 6 is the Lyman-α forest of absorption lines produced by neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium between us and high-redshift quasars (see McQuinn 2016 for a recent review and further details).”
FIRE in the field: Simulating the threshold of galaxy formation (2016, background): “Reionization heats the intergalactic medium to T ≈ 2 × 104 K (Faucher-Giguère et al. 2009; McQuinn 2016), meaning that gravitational potential of halo m10a is not sufficient to bind UV-heated gas in the postreionization era.”
Modeling the Radio Background from the First Black Holes at Cosmic Dawn: Implications for the 21 cm Absorption Amplitude (2018, background): “The redshifted 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen (H I) offers a promising tool for mapping our universe’s “cosmic dawn,” when the first luminous sources formed (see Barkana & Loeb 2001; Furlanetto et al. 2006; Morales & Wyithe 2010; Pritchard & Loeb 2012; McQuinn 2016 for reviews).”