paper

Small Scale Structure at High Redshift: III. The Clumpiness of the Intergalactic Medium on Sub-kpc Scales

arXiv:astro-ph/0107516 · doi:10.1086/323523

Abstract

Spectra from the Keck HIRES instrument of the Lyman alpha forests in the lines of sight to the A and C components of the gravitationally lensed QSO Q1422+231 were used to investigate the structure of the intergalactic medium at mean redshift z = 3.3 on sub-kpc scales. We measured the cross-correlation amplitude between the two Lyman alpha forests for a mean transverse separation of 120 pc, and computed the RMS column density and velocity differences between individual absorption systems seen in both lines of sight. The RMS differences between the velocity centroids of the Lyman alpha forest lines were found to be less than about 400 m/s, for unsaturated absorption lines with column densities in the range 12<log N(HI)<14.13. The rate of energy transfer into the low density IGM on a typical scale of 100 pc seems to be lower by 3-4 orders of magnitude than the rate measured earlier for strong CIV metal absorption systems. The tight correlation between HI column density and baryonic density in the intergalactic medium was used to obtain an upper limit on the RMS fluctuations of the baryonic density field. The fraction of the absorption lines that are different across the lines of sight was used to determine the filling factor of the universe for gas which has suffered recent hydrodynamic disturbances. We thereby derived upper limits on the filling factor of galactic outflows at high redshift. Short-lived, short-range ancient winds are essentially unconstrained by this method but strong winds blowing for a substantial fraction of a Hubble time (at z = 3.3) appear to fill less than 20 percent of the volume of the universe.

latex file plus 12 postscript figures (36 pages in total); accepted for publication by the ApJ

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