Thermal History Of Intergalactic Medium Research Articles

Deep learning the intergalactic medium using lyman-alpha forest at 4 ≤ z ≤ 5

Abstract Unveiling the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at 4 ≤ z ≤ 5 holds the potential to reveal early onset He ii reionization or lingering thermal fluctuations from H i reionization. We set out to reconstruct the IGM gas properties along simulated Lyman-alpha forest data on pixel-by-pixel basis, employing deep neural networks. Our approach leverages the Sherwood-Relics simulation suite, consisting of diverse thermal histories, to generate mock spectra. Our convolutional and residual networks with likelihood metric predicts the Lyα optical depth-weighted density or temperature for each pixel in the Lyα forest skewer. We find that our network can successfully reproduce IGM conditions with high fidelity across range of instrumental signal-to-noise. These predictions are subsequently translated into the temperature-density plane, facilitating the derivation of reliable constraints on thermal parameters. This allows us to estimate temperature at mean cosmic density, T0 , with one sigma confidence, $\delta {\rm T_{\rm 0}}\,$≲ 1000K, using only one 20h−1cMpc sightline (Δz ≃ 0.04) with a typical reionization history. Existing studies utilize redshift pathlength comparable to Δz ≃ 4 for similar constraints. We can also provide more stringent constraints on the slope (1σ confidence interval, δγ ≲ 0.1) of the IGM temperature-density relation as compared to other traditional approaches. We test the reconstruction on a single high signal-to-noise observed spectrum (20h−1cMpc segment), and recover thermal parameters consistent with current measurements. This machine learning approach has the potential to provide accurate yet robust measurements of IGM thermal history at the redshifts in question.

The thermal history of the intergalactic medium at 3.9 ≤ z ≤ 4.3

Abstract A new determination of the temperature of the intergalactic medium (IGM) over $3.9 \leq z \leq 4.3$ is presented. We applied the curvature method on a sample of 10 high-resolution quasar spectra from the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph on the VLT/ESO. We measured the temperature at mean density by determining the temperature at the characteristic overdensity, which is tight function of the absolute curvature irrespective of $\unicode{x03B3}$ . Under the assumption of fiducial value of $\unicode{x03B3} = 1.4$ , we determined the values of temperatures at mean density $T_{0} = 7893^{+1417}_{-1226}$ K and $T_{0} = 8153^{+1224}_{-993}$ K for redshift range of $3.9 \leq z \leq 4.1$ and $4.1 \leq z \leq 4.3$ , respectively. Even though the results show no strong temperature evolution over the studied redshift range, our measurements are consistent with an IGM thermal history that includes a contribution from He ii reionisation.

Revealing Reionization with the Thermal History of the Intergalactic Medium: New Constraints from the Lyα Flux Power Spectrum

Abstract We present a new investigation of the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) during and after reionization using the Lyα forest flux power spectrum at 4.0 ≲ z ≲ 5.2. Using a sample of 15 high-resolution spectra, we measure the flux power down to the smallest scales ever probed at these redshifts (−1 ≲ log(k/km−1 s) ≲ −0.7). These scales are highly sensitive to both the instantaneous temperature of the IGM and the total energy injected per unit mass during and after reionization. We measure temperatures at the mean density of T 0 ∼ 7000–8000 K, consistent with no significant temperature evolution for redshifts 4.2 ≲ z ≲ 5.0. We also present the first observational constraints on the integrated IGM thermal history, finding that the total energy input per unit mass increases from u 0 ∼ 4.6 to 7.3 eV from z ∼ 6 to 4.2 assuming a ΛCDM cosmology. We show how these results can be used simultaneously to obtain information on the timing and the sources of the reionization process. Our first proof of concept using simplistic models of instantaneous reionization produces results comparable to and consistent with the recent Planck constraints, favoring models with .

Thermal Sunyaev–Zel’dovich Effect in the IGM due to Primordial Magnetic Fields

In the present universe, magnetic fields exist with various strengths and on various scales. One possible origin of these cosmic magnetic fields is the primordial magnetic fields (PMFs) generated in the early universe. PMFs are considered to contribute to matter density evolution via Lorentz force and the thermal history of intergalactic medium (IGM) gas due to ambipolar diffusion. Therefore, information about PMFs should be included in the temperature anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background through the thermal Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (tSZ) effect in IGM. In this article, given an initial power spectrum of PMFs, we show the spatial fluctuation of mass density and temperature of the IGM and tSZ angular power spectrum created by the PMFs. Finally, we find that the tSZ angular power spectrum induced by PMFs becomes significant on small scales, even with PMFs below the observational upper limit. Therefore, we conclude that the measurement of tSZ anisotropy on small scales will provide the most stringent constraint on PMFs.

Constraints on X-ray emissions from the reionization era

We examine the constraints on soft X-ray emissions from the reionization era. It has generally been assumed that the Universe was reionized by ultraviolet photons from massive stars. However, it has been argued that X-ray photons associated with the death of these stars would have contributed ~10% to the total ionizations via several channels. The parameter space for a significant component of cosmological reionization to be sourced by X-rays is limited by a few observations. We revisit the unresolved soft X-ray background constraint and show that it significantly limits the contribution to reionization from several potential sources: X-rays from X-ray binaries, from Compton scattering off supernovae-accelerated electrons, and from the annihilation of dark matter particles. We discuss the additional limits on high-redshift X-ray production from (1) z~3 measurements of metal absorption lines, (2) the consensus that helium reionization was ending at z~3, and (3) measurements of the intergalactic medium's thermal history. We show that observations of z~3 metal lines allow little room for extra coeval X-ray emission from nonstandard sources. In addition, we show that the late reionization of helium makes it difficult to also ionize the hydrogen at z>6 with a single source population (such as quasars) and that it likely requires the spectrum of ionizing emissions to soften with increasing redshift. However, it is difficult to constrain an X-ray contribution to reionization from the intergalactic temperature history. We show that the gas would have been heated to a narrower range of temperatures than is typically assumed at reionization, 2-3 x10^4 K.

The intergalactic medium thermal history at redshiftz= 1.7-3.2 from the Lyα forest: a comparison of measurements using wavelets and the flux distribution

We investigate the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in the redshift interval z=1.7--3.2 by studying the small-scale fluctuations in the Lyman alpha forest transmitted flux. We apply a wavelet filtering technique to eighteen high resolution quasar spectra obtained with the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES), and compare these data to synthetic spectra drawn from a suite of hydrodynamical simulations in which the IGM thermal state and cosmological parameters are varied. From the wavelet analysis we obtain estimates of the IGM thermal state that are in good agreement with other recent, independent wavelet-based measurements. We also perform a reanalysis of the same data set using the Lyman alpha forest flux probability distribution function (PDF), which has previously been used to measure the IGM temperature-density relation. This provides an important consistency test for measurements of the IGM thermal state, as it enables a direct comparison of the constraints obtained using these two different methodologies. We find the constraints obtained from wavelets and the flux PDF are formally consistent with each other, although in agreement with previous studies, the flux PDF constraints favour an isothermal or inverted IGM temperature-density relation. We also perform a joint analysis by combining our wavelet and flux PDF measurements, constraining the IGM thermal state at z=2.1 to have a temperature at mean density of T0/[10^3 K]=17.3 +/- 1.9 and a power-law temperature-density relation exponent gamma=1.1 +/- 0.1 (1 sigma). Our results are consistent with previous observations that indicate there may be additional sources of heating in the IGM at z<4.

Early preheating and galaxy formation

Winds from pregalactic starbursts and 'miniquasars' may pollute the intergalactic medium (IGM) with metals and raise its temperature to a much higher adiabat than expected from photoionization, and so inhibit the formation of early galaxies by increasing the cosmological Jeans mass. We compute the thermal history of the IGM when it experiences a period of rapid, homogeneous 'preheating' at high redshifts, and the impact of such a global feedback mechanism on the IGM ionization state and the subsequent galaxy formation and evolution. Measurements of the temperature of the Lyα forest at redshift z ∼ 3 constrain the redshift and energy of preheating, and rule out models that preheat too late or to too high a temperature, i.e. to T I G M ? 10 6 K at z? 10. The IGM thermal history is used to estimate the effects of preheating on the formation of galaxies at later epochs, allowing us to predict galaxy luminosity functions in preheated universes. The results depend crucially on whether the baryonic smoothing scale in the IGM is computed globally, or in a local, density-dependent fashion (since the IGM temperature can become highly inhomogeneous in the post-preheating epoch). Using a globally averaged smoothing scale, we find that models with excessive preheating produce too few L * and fainter galaxies, and are therefore inconsistent with observational data. More moderate preheating scenarios, with T I G M ? 10 5 K at z ∼ 10, are able to flatten the faint-end slope of the luminosity function, producing excellent agreement with observations, without the need for any local feedback mechanism within galaxies. A density-dependent smoothing scale requires more energetic preheating to achieve the same degree of suppression in the faint-end slope. All models, however, appear unable to explain the sharp cut-off in the luminosity function at bright magnitudes - a problem that is also common to more conventional local feedback prescriptions. Supernova-driven preheating scenarios tend to raise the mean metallicity of the universe well above the minimum levels observed in the Lya clouds. The high energies associated with preheating cause a sharp drop in the abundance of neutral hydrogen in the IGM and are often sufficient to double ionize helium at high redshift, well before the 'quasar epoch'. We find that ionizing photon escape fractions must be significantly higher than 10 per cent in order to explain the low inferred H I fraction at z 6, particularly when using a globally averaged smoothing scale. While early preheating causes strong suppression of dwarf galaxy formation, we show that it is not able to reproduce the observed abundance of satellite galaxies in the Local Group in detail. The detailed thermal history of the universe during the formative early stages around z = 10-15 remains one of the crucial missing links in galaxy-formation and evolution studies.