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The thermal history of the intergalactic medium

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arxiv astro-ph/9912432 v2 pith:D7GD4API submitted 1999-12-20 astro-ph

classification astro-ph
keywords densityintergalacticmediumcolumncut-offhighlyman-alpharedshift
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At redshifts z >~ 2, most of the baryons reside in the smooth intergalactic medium which is responsible for the low column density Lyman-alpha forest. This photoheated gas follows a tight temperature-density relation which introduces a cut-off in the distribution of widths of the Lyman-alpha absorption lines (b-parameters) as a function of column density. We have measured this cut-off in a sample of nine high resolution, high signal-to-noise quasar spectra, and determined the thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium in the redshift range 2.0-4.5. At redshift z ~ 3, the temperature at the mean density shows a peak and the gas becomes nearly isothermal. We interpret this as evidence for the reionization of HeII.

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  1. Patchy Helium and Hydrogen Reionization from the Kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect and Galaxies

    astro-ph.CO 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Forecasts show that cross-correlating kSZ temperature-squared maps with galaxy-reconstructed velocity-squared maps can jointly constrain hydrogen and helium reionization, making helium measurable with CMB-HD and MegaMapper.

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