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Temperature fluctuations in the intergalactic medium | | Tom Theuns
; Saleem Zaroubi
; Tae-Sun Kim
; Panayiotis Tzanavaris
; Robert F. Carswell
; | | Date: |
29 Oct 2001 | | Journal: | Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 332 (2002) 367-382 | | Subject: | astro-ph | | Affiliation: | IoA), Saleem Zaroubi (MPA), Tae-Sun Kim (ESO), Panayiotis Tzanavaris (IoA), Robert F. Carswell (IoA | | Abstract: | The temperature of the low-density intergalactic medium is set by the balance between adiabatic cooling resulting from the expansion of the universe, and photo-heating by the UV-background. We have analysed the Lyman-alpha forest of eleven high-resolution quasar spectra using wavelets, and find strong evidence of a marked jump in the temperature at the mean density, T_0, of 60 per cent around a redshift z=3.3, which we attribute to reionization of HeliumII. The jump can be seen in all three of our spectra that straddle redshift 3.3, at a significance of 99 per cent. Below z=3.1, our results are consistent with a smooth cooling down of the universe, as expected when adiabatic expansion dominates over photo-heating by a UV-background from QSOs and galaxies. We find no evidence of thermal fluctuations on scales greater than 5000 km/s larger than 50 per cent, which could be detected by our method, suggesting that the IGM follows a reasonably well-defined temperature-density relation. We demonstrate that the mean wavelet amplitude scales inversely with T_0 and calibrate the relation with hydrodynamical simulations. We find T_0= 12000K at z>3.6. Such high temperature suggest that Hydrogen reionization occured relatively recent. | | Source: | arXiv, astro-ph/0110600 | | Services: | Forum | Review | PDF | Favorites | |
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