The Evolution of the Effective Equation of State of the Intergalactic Medium | Zendy

Massimo Ricotti | Zendy; Nickolay Y. Gnedin | Zendy; J. Michael Shull | Zendy

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The Evolution of the Effective Equation of State of the Intergalactic Medium

Author(s) -

Massimo Ricotti,

Nickolay Y. Gnedin,

J. Michael Shull

Publication year - 2000

Publication title -

the astrophysical journal

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 2.376

H-Index - 489

eISSN - 1538-4357

pISSN - 0004-637X

DOI - 10.1086/308733

Subject(s) - reionization , intergalactic medium , redshift , intergalactic travel , physics , equation of state , isothermal process , astrophysics , lyman alpha forest , quantum mechanics , galaxy , thermodynamics

We develop a method to extract the "effective equation of state" of theintergalactic medium from the doppler b parameter distribution of thelow-density Lyman-alpha forest. We test the method on numerical simulations andthen apply it to published observations of the Lyman-alpha forest at redshiftsz from 0 to 4. We find that the effective equation of state is close toisothermal at redshift z=3, indicating that a second reheating of the IGM tookplace at z=3. This reheating can plausibly be identified with the reionizationof HeII observed to occur at z about 3.Comment: Revised version accepted for publication in ApJ. Vol. 534 May 1, 2000 (in press); 32 pages, 13 figures, 7 table

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