It has been known for decades that the observed number of baryons in the local Universe falls about 30-40 per cent short
of the total number of baryons predicted
by Big Bang nucleosynthesis, as ...inferred
from density fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background and seen during the first 2-3 billion years of the Universe in the so-called 'Lyman α forest'
(a dense series of intervening H I Lyman α absorption lines in the optical spectra of background quasars). A theoretical solution to this paradox locates the missing baryons in the hot and tenuous filamentary gas between galaxies, known as the warm-hot intergalactic medium. However, it is difficult to detect them there because the largest by far constituent of this gas-hydrogen-is mostly ionized and therefore almost invisible in far-ultraviolet spectra with typical signal-to-noise ratios
. Indeed, despite large observational efforts, only a few marginal claims of detection have been made so far
. Here we report observations of two absorbers of highly ionized oxygen (O VII) in the high-signal-to-noise-ratio X-ray spectrum of a quasar at a redshift higher than 0.4. These absorbers show no variability over a two-year timescale and have no associated cold absorption, making the assumption that they originate from the quasar's intrinsic outflow or the host galaxy's interstellar medium implausible. The O VII systems lie in regions characterized by large (four times larger than average
) galaxy overdensities and their number (down to the sensitivity threshold of our data) agrees well with numerical simulation predictions for the long-sought warm-hot intergalactic medium. We conclude that the missing baryons have been found.
ABSTRACT
A new fully non-linear reconstruction algorithm for the accurate recovery of the baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) scale in two-point correlation functions is proposed, based on the least ...action principle and extending the Fast Action Minimisation method by Nusser & Branchini (2000). Especially designed for massive spectroscopic surveys, it is tested on dark matter halo catalogues extracted from the deus-fur Lambda cold dark matter simulation (Reverdy et al. 2015) to trace the trajectories of up to ${\sim }207\, 000$ haloes backward in time, well beyond the first-order Lagrangian approximation. The new algorithm successfully recovers the BAO feature in real and redshift space in both the monopole and the anisotropic two-point correlation function, also for anomalous samples showing misplaced or absent signature of BAO. In redshift space, the non-linear displacement parameter ΣNL is reduced from $11.8\pm 0.3\, h^{-1}$ Mpc at redshift $z$ = 0 to $4.0\pm 0.5\, h^{-1}$ Mpc at $z$ ≃ 37 after reconstruction. A comparison with the first-order Lagrangian reconstruction is presented, showing that these techniques outperform the linear approximation in recovering an unbiased measurement of the acoustic scale.
Abstract
Observed galaxy luminosities (derived from redshifts) hold information on the large-scale peculiar velocity field in the form of spatially correlated scatter, which allows for bounds on bulk ...flows and the growth rate of matter density perturbations using large galaxy redshift surveys. We apply this luminosity approach to galaxies from the recent SDSS Data Release 13. Our goal is twofold. First, we take advantage of the recalibrated photometry to identify possible systematic errors relevant to our previous analysis of earlier data. Second, we seek improved constraints on the bulk flow and the normalized growth rate fσ8 at z ∼ 0.1. Our results confirm the robustness of our method. Bulk flow amplitudes, estimated in two redshift bins with 0.02 < z1 < 0.07 < z2 < 0.22, are generally smaller than in previous measurements, consistent with both the updated photometry and expectations for the Λ cold dark matter model. The obtained growth rate, fσ8 = 0.48 ± 0.16, is larger than, but still compatible with, its previous estimate, and closer to the reference value of Planck. Rather than precision, the importance of these results is due to the fact that they follow from an independent method that relies on accurate photometry, which is a top requirement for next-generation photometric catalogues.
ABSTRACT
The warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) contains a significant portion of the ‘missing baryons’. Its detection in emission remains a challenge. Integral field spectrometers like X-IFU on ...board of the Athena satellite will secure WHIM detection in absorption and emission and, for the first time, allow us to investigate its physical properties. In our research, we use the CAMELS simulations to model the surface brightness maps of the OVII and OVIII ion lines and compute summary statistics like photon counts and 2-point correlation functions to infer the properties of the WHIM. Our findings confirm that detectable WHIM emission is primarily associated with galaxy haloes, and the properties of the WHIM show minimal evolution from z ∼ 0.5 to the present time. By exploring a wide range of parameters within the CAMELS suite, we investigate the sensitivity of WHIM properties to cosmology and energy feedback mechanisms influenced by active galactic nuclei and stellar activity. This approach allows us to separate the cosmological aspects from the baryonic processes and place constraints on the latter. Additionally, we provide forecasts for WHIM observations using a spectrometer similar to X-IFU. We anticipate detecting 1–3 WHIM emission lines per pixel and mapping the WHIM emission profile around haloes up to a few tens of arcminutes, surpassing the typical size of a WHIM emitter. Overall, our work demonstrates the potential of emission studies to probe the densest phase of the WHIM, shedding light on its physical properties and offering insights into the cosmological and baryonic processes at play.
We propose a new approach to the problem of the missing baryons. Building on the common assumption that the missing baryons are in the form of the warm hot intergalactic medium (WHIM), we also assume ...here that the galaxy luminosity density can be used as a tracer of the WHIM. This last assumption is supported by our discovery of a significant correlation between the WHIM density and the galaxy luminosity density in recent hydrodynamical simulations. We also found that the percentage of the gas mass in the WHIM phase is substantially higher (by a factor of ~1.6) within large-scale galactic filaments, i.e. ~70%, compared to the average in the full simulation volume of ~0.1 Gpc3. The relation between the WHIM overdensity and the galaxy luminosity overdensity within the galactic filaments is consistent with a linear one: δwhim = 0.7 ± 0.1 × δLD0.9±0.2. We then applied our procedure to the line of sight towards the blazar H2356-309 and found evidence of WHIM that corresponds to the Sculptor Wall (SW) (z ~ 0.03 and log NH = 19.9+ 0.1-0.3) and Pisces-Cetus (PC) superclusters (z ~ 0.06 and log NH = 19.7+ 0.2-0.3), in agreement with the redshifts and column densities of the X-ray absorbers identified recently. This agreement indicates that the galaxy luminosity density and galactic filaments are reliable signposts for the WHIM and that our method is robust for estimating WHIM density. The signal that we detected cannot originate in the halos of nearby galaxies because they cannot account for the high WHIM column densities that our method and X-ray analysis consistently find in the SW and PC superclusters.
ABSTRACT
We present the first application of the extended Fast Action Minimization method (eFAM) to a real data set, the SDSS-DR12 Combined Sample, to reconstruct galaxies orbits back-in-time, their ...two-point correlation function (2PCF) in real-space, and enhance the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) peak. For this purpose, we introduce a new implementation of eFAM that accounts for selection effects, survey footprint, and galaxy bias. We use the reconstructed BAO peak to measure the angular diameter distance, $D_\mathrm{A}(z)r^\mathrm{fid}_\mathrm{s}/r_\mathrm{s}$, and the Hubble parameter, $H(z)r_\mathrm{s}/r^\mathrm{fid}_\mathrm{s}$, normalized to the sound horizon scale for a fiducial cosmology $r^\mathrm{fid}_\mathrm{s}$, at the mean redshift of the sample z = 0.38, obtaining $D_\mathrm{A}(z=0.38)r^\mathrm{fid}_\mathrm{s}/r_\mathrm{s}=1090\pm 29$(Mpc)−1, and $H(z=0.38)r_\mathrm{s}/r^\mathrm{fid}_\mathrm{s}=83\pm 3$(km s−1 Mpc−1), in agreement with previous measurements on the same data set. The validation tests, performed using 400 publicly available SDSS-DR12 mock catalogues, reveal that eFAM performs well in reconstructing the 2PCF down to separations of ∼25h−1Mpc, i.e. well into the non-linear regime. Besides, eFAM successfully removes the anisotropies due to redshift-space distortion (RSD) at all redshifts including that of the survey, allowing us to decrease the number of free parameters in the model and fit the full-shape of the back-in-time reconstructed 2PCF well beyond the BAO peak. Recovering the real-space 2PCF, eFAM improves the precision on the estimates of the fitting parameters. When compared with the no-reconstruction case, eFAM reduces the uncertainty of the Alcock-Paczynski distortion parameters α⊥ and α∥ of about 40 per cent and that on the non-linear damping scale Σ∥ of about 70 per cent. These results show that eFAM can be successfully applied to existing redshift galaxy catalogues and should be considered as a reconstruction tool for next-generation surveys alternative to popular methods based on the Zel’dovich approximation.
We present the general real- and redshift-space clustering properties of galaxies as measured in the first data release of the VIPERS survey. VIPERS is a large redshift survey designed to probe in ...detail the distant Universe and its large-scale structure at 0.5 < z < 1.2. We describe in this analysis the global properties of the sample and discuss the survey completeness and associated corrections. This sample allows us to measure the galaxy clustering with an unprecedented accuracy at these redshifts. From the redshift-space distortions observed in the galaxy clustering pattern we provide a first measurement of the growth rate of structure at z = 0.8: fsigma8 = 0.47 + or - 0.08. This is completely consistent with the predictions of standard cosmological models based on Einstein gravity, although this measurement alone does not discriminate between different gravity models.
We present the first Public Data Release (PDR-1) of the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Survey (VIPERS). It comprises 57 204 spectroscopic measurements together with all additional information necessary ...for optimal scientific exploitation of the data, in particular the associated photometric measurements and quantification of the photometric and survey completeness. VIPERS is an ESO Large Programme designed to build a spectroscopic sample of similar to 100 000 galaxies with i sub(AB) < 22.5 and 0.5 < z < 1.2 with high sampling rate ( similar to 45%). The survey spectroscopic targets are selected from the CFHTLS-Wide five-band catalogues in the W1 and W4 fields. The final survey will cover a total area of nearly 24 deg super(2), for a total comoving volume between z = 0.5 and 1.2 of similar to 4 x 10 super(7) h super(-3) Mpc super(3) and a median galaxy redshift of z similar to 0.8. The release presented in this paper includes data from virtually the entire W4 field and nearly half of the W1 area, thus representing 64% of the final dataset. We provide a detailed description of sample selection, observations and data reduction procedures; we summarise the global properties of the spectroscopic catalogue and explain the associated data products and their use, and provide all the details for accessing the data through the survey database (http://vipers.inaf.it) where all information can be queried interactively.
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