The physics of the intergalactic medium

By A. Meiksin. 2007

256 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Intergalactic space is filled with a pervasive medium of ionized gas, the Intergalactic Medium (IGM). A residual neutral fraction is detected in the spectra of Quasi-Stellar Objects at both low and high redshifts, revealing a highly fluctuating medium with temperatures characteristic of photoionized gas. The statistics of the fluctuations are well-reproduced by numerical gravity-hydrodynamics simulations within the context of standard cosmological structure formation scenarios. As such, the study of the IGM offers an opportunity to probe the nature of the primordial density fluctuations on scales unavailable to other methods. The simulations also suggest the IGM is the dominant reservoir of baryons produced by the Big Bang, and so the principal source of the matter from which galaxies formed. The detection of metal systems within the IGM shows that it was enriched by evolved stars early in its history, demonstrating an intimate connection between galaxy formation and the IGM. The author presents a comprehensive review of the current understanding of the structure and physical properties of the IGM and its relation to galaxies, concluding with comments on prospects for furthering the study of the IGM using future ground-based facilities and space-based experiments.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4ae629d7ae12d138cc8d8ffadb74d593a10f9ec4

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

Citations in the corpus

Constraint on neutrino masses from SDSS-III/BOSS Lyα forest and other cosmological probes (2014, unknown): “7 [38].”
A Redshift-independent Efficiency Model: Star Formation and Stellar Masses in Dark Matter Halos at z ≳ 4 (2018, unknown): “10−2 (Meiksin 2009).”
Lyman-alpha constraints on warm and on warm-plus-cold dark matter models (2008, background): “Part of the physics entering into the Ly-α analysis is not fully understood (for a recent review see [52]), and can be significantly influenced by DM particles (see e.g. [53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59]).”
Constraints on neutrinos and WDM Hints, neutrino bounds and WDM constraints from SDSS DR14 Lyman-$\alpha$ and Planck full-survey data (2019, methodology): “4 in agreement with [39], and where τeff(z) is defined with respect to the mean flux as τeff(z) ≡ − ln〈F (z)〉.”
Lyman-alpha forests cool warm dark matter (2015, background): “The central values of A and η are in agreement with observations, and the allowed range encompasses observational uncertainties [41].”
The one-dimensional Lyα forest power spectrum from BOSS (2013, result): “The mean transmitted flux fraction is well fit by a function of the form exp[−α(1 + z)β], with α ∼ 0.0046 and β ∼ 3.3, in agreement with previous measurements of the optical depth τeff where F̄ ∝ exp(−τeff) (see e.g. Meiksin 2009, for a review).”
The one-dimensional power spectrum from the SDSS DR14 Lyα forests (2018, methodology): “ion rate of each simulation was ﬁxed by requiring the eective optical depth at each redshift to follow the empirical law ˝ e(z) = A˝(1+z)˝, with A˝= 0:0025 0:0020 and ˝= 3:7 0:4 in agreement with [4]. This renormalization was done at the post-processing stage, as justiﬁed in [70], allowing a test of”
Constraints on neutrino masses from Lyman-alpha forest power spectrum with BOSS and XQ-100 (2017, background): “rate of each simulation is ﬁxed by requiring the eective optical depth at each redshift to follow the empirical law ˝ e(z) = A˝(1 + z) ˝, with A˝ = 0:0025 0:0020 and ˝ = 3:7 0:4 in agreement with [38]. This renormalization is done at the post-processing stage, as justiﬁed in [39], allowing us to tes”
The effect of neutrinos on the matter distribution as probed by the intergalactic medium (2010, background): “[7] for a more general review of the IGM).”
The Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium (2015, background): “For uncovered topics, we point the reader to the more comprehensive recent review of Meiksin (2009).”
A White Paper on keV sterile neutrino Dark Matter (2016, background): “This new cosmological role for the IGM has been mainly allowed by two factors: on one side the new high-resolution high signal-to-noise quasar spectra and on the other side the progress made by the first set of hydrodynamic simulations [548].”
Constraints from Ly-α forests on non-thermal dark matter including resonantly-produced sterile neutrinos (2017, unknown): “The photo-ionization rate in the IGM is fixed in all 13 redshift bins to be in agreement with typical measurements (see for instance [50]), which is equivalent to re-normalizing the Pφ(k) amplitude through the effective optical depth, which we model by a simple redshift power law: − ln〈φ〉 = τeff = A”