Bibcode
Bertone, Serena; Schaye, Joop; Booth, C. M.; Dalla Vecchia, C.; Theuns, Tom; Wiersma, Robert P. C.
Referencia bibliográfica
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 408, Issue 2, pp. 1120-1138.
Fecha de publicación:
10
2010
Número de citas
29
Número de citas referidas
29
Descripción
Approximately half the baryons in the local Universe are thought to
reside in the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM), i.e. diffuse gas
with temperatures in the range 105 < T <
107K. Emission lines from metals in the UV band are excellent
tracers of the cooler fraction of this gas, with T <~
106K. We present predictions for the surface brightness of a
sample of UV lines that could potentially be observed by the next
generation of UV telescopes at z < 1. We use a subset of simulations
from the OverWhelmingly Large Simulations project to create emission
maps and to investigate the effect of varying the physical prescriptions
for star formation, supernova and active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback,
chemodynamics and radiative cooling. Most models agree with each other
to within a factor of a few, indicating that the predictions are robust.
Of the lines we consider, CIII (977 Å) is the strongest line, but
it typically traces gas colder than 105K. The same is true
for SiIV (1393,1403 Å). The second strongest line, CIV
(1548,1551Å), traces circumgalactic gas with T ~ 105K.
OVI (1032,1038Å) and NeVIII (770,780Å) probe the warmer (T ~
105.5 and 106K, respectively) and more diffuse gas
that may be a better tracer of the large-scale structure. NV
(1239,1243Å) emission is intermediate between CIV and OVI. The
intensity of all emission lines increases strongly with gas density and
metallicity, and for the bright emission it is tightly correlated with
the temperature for which the line emissivity is highest. In particular,
the CIII, CIV, SiIV and OVI emission that is sufficiently bright to be
potentially detectable in the near future (surface brightness
>~103photons-1cm-2sr-1)
comes from relatively dense (ρ >
102ρmean) and metal rich (Z >~
0.1Zsolar) gas. As such, emission lines are highly biased
tracers of the missing baryons and are not an optimal tool to close the
baryon budget. However, they do provide a powerful means to detect the
gas cooling on to or flowing out of galaxies and groups.