TY - JOUR A1 - Worseck, Gabor A1 - Prochaska, J. Xavier A1 - McQuinn, Matthew A1 - Dall'Aglio, Aldo A1 - Fechner, Cora A1 - Hennawi, Joseph F. A1 - Reimers, Dieter A1 - Richter, Philipp A1 - Wisotzki, Lutz T1 - The end of Helium Reionization at z similar or equal to 2.7 Inferred from cosmic variance in HST/COS He II Ly alpha Absorption spectra JF - The astrophysical journal : an international review of spectroscopy and astronomical physics ; Part 2, Letters N2 - We report on the detection of strongly varying intergalactic He II absorption in HST/COS spectra of two z(em) similar or equal to 3 quasars. From our homogeneous analysis of the He II absorption in these and three archival sightlines, we find a marked increase in the mean He II effective optical depth from similar or equal to 1 at z similar or equal to 2.3 to greater than or similar to 5 at z similar or equal to 3.2, but with a large scatter of 2 less than or similar to tau(eff, He II) less than or similar to 5 at 2.7 < z < 3 on scales of similar to 10 proper Mpc. This scatter is primarily due to fluctuations in the He II fraction and the He II-ionizing background, rather than density variations that are probed by the coeval Hi forest. Semianalytic models of He II absorption require a strong decrease in the He II-ionizing background to explain the strong increase of the absorption at z greater than or similar to 2.7, probably indicating He II reionization was incomplete at z(reion) greater than or similar to 2.7. Likewise, recent three-dimensional numerical simulations of He II reionization qualitatively agree with the observed trend only if He II reionization completes at z(reion) similar or equal to 2.7 or even below, as suggested by a large tau(eff, He II) greater than or similar to 3 in two of our five sightlines at z < 2.8. By doubling the sample size at 2.7 less than or similar to z less than or similar to 3, our newly discovered He II sightlines for the first time probe the diversity of the second epoch of reionization when helium became fully ionized. KW - dark ages, reionization, first stars KW - diffuse radiation KW - intergalactic medium KW - quasars: absorption lines KW - quasars: individual (SDSS J092447.36+485242.8, SDSS J110155.74+105302.3) Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/733/2/L24 SN - 2041-8205 VL - 733 IS - 2 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Winkel, B. A1 - Ben Bekhti, Nadya A1 - Darmstaedter, V. A1 - Floeer, L. A1 - Kerp, J. A1 - Richter, Philipp T1 - The high-velocity cloud complex Galactic center negative as seen by EBHIS and GASS I. Cloud catalog and global properties JF - Astronomy and astrophysics : an international weekly journal N2 - Using Milky Way data of the new Effelsberg-Bonn HI Survey (EBHIS) and the Galactic All-Sky Survey (GASS), we present a revised picture of the high-velocity cloud (HVC) complex Galactic center negative (GCN). Owing to the higher angular resolution of these surveys compared to previous studies (e.g., the Leiden Dwingeloo Survey), we resolve complex GCN into lots of individual tiny clumps, that mostly have relatively broad line widths of more than 15 km s(-1). We do not detect a diffuse extended counterpart, which is unusual for an HVC complex. In total 243 clumps were identified and parameterized which allows us to statistically analyze the data. Cold-line components (i.e.,Delta upsilon(fwhm) < 7.5 km s(-1)) are found in about 5% only of the identified cloudlets. Our analysis reveals that complex GCN is likely built up of several subpopulations that do not share a common origin. Furthermore, complex GCN might be a prime example for warm-gas accretion onto the Milky Way, where neutral HI clouds are not stable against interaction with the Milky Way gas halo and become ionized prior to accretion. KW - ISM: clouds KW - Galaxy: halo Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201117357 SN - 0004-6361 VL - 533 IS - 18 PB - EDP Sciences CY - Les Ulis ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tepper-Garcia, Thorsten A1 - Richter, Philipp A1 - Schaye, Joop A1 - Booth, C. M. A1 - Vecchia, Claudio Dalla A1 - Theuns, Tom A1 - Wiersma, Robert P. C. T1 - Absorption signatures of warm-hot gas at low redshift o vi JF - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society N2 - We investigate the origin and physical properties of O vi absorbers at low redshift (z = 0.25) using a subset of cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations from the OverWhelmingly Large Simulations (OWLS) project. Intervening O vi absorbers are believed to trace shock-heated gas in the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) and may thus play a key role in the search for the missing baryons in the present-day Universe. When compared to observations, the predicted distributions of the different O vi line parameters (column density, Doppler parameter, rest equivalent width W-r) from our simulations exhibit a lack of strong O vi absorbers, a discrepancy that has also been found by Oppenheimer & Dave. This suggests that physical processes on subgrid scales (e.g. turbulence) may strongly influence the observed properties of O vi systems. We find that the intervening O vi absorption arises mainly in highly metal enriched (10-1 < Z/Z(circle dot) less than or similar to 1) gas at typical overdensities of 1 < /<<>> less than or similar to 102. One-third of the O vi absorbers in our simulation are found to trace gas at temperatures T < 105 K, while the rest arises in gas at higher temperatures, most of them around T = 105.3 +/- 0.5 K. These temperatures are much higher than inferred by Oppenheimer & Dave, probably because that work did not take the suppression of metal-line cooling by the photoionizing background radiation into account. While the O vi resides in a similar region of (, T)-space as much of the shock-heated baryonic matter, the vast majority of this gas has a lower metal content and does not give rise to detectable O vi absorption. As a consequence of the patchy metal distribution, O vi absorbers in our simulations trace only a very small fraction of the cosmic baryons (< 2 per cent) and the cosmic metals. Instead, these systems presumably trace previously shock-heated, metal-rich material from galactic winds that is now mixing with the ambient gas and cooling. The common approach of comparing O vi and H i column densities to estimate the physical conditions in intervening absorbers from QSO observations may be misleading, as most of the H i (and most of the gas mass) is not physically connected with the high-metallicity patches that give rise to the O vi absorption. KW - methods: numerical KW - galaxies: formation KW - intergalactic medium KW - quasars: absorption lines KW - cosmology: theory Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.18123.x SN - 0035-8711 VL - 413 IS - 1 SP - 190 EP - 212 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Richter, Philipp A1 - Krause, F. A1 - Fechner, Cora A1 - Charlton, Jane C. A1 - Murphy, M. T. T1 - The neutral gas extent of galaxies as derived from weak intervening Ca II absorbers JF - Astronomy and astrophysics : an international weekly journal N2 - We present a systematic study of weak intervening CaII absorbers at low redshift (z < 0.5), based on the analysis of archival high-resolution (R >= 45 000) optical spectra of 304 quasars and active galactic nuclei observed with VLT/UVES. Along a total redshift path of Delta z approximate to 100 we detected 23 intervening CaII absorbers in both the CaII H & K lines, with rest frame equivalent widths W-r,W-3934 = 15-799 m angstrom and column densities log N(CaII) = 11.25-13.04 (obtained by fitting Voigt-profile components). We obtain a bias-corrected number density of weak intervening CaII absorbers of dN/dz = 0.117 +/- 0.044 at < z(abs)> = 0.35 for absorbers with log N(CaII) >= 11.65 (W-r,W-3934 >= 32 m angstrom). This is similar to 2.6 times the value obtained for damped Lyman alpha absorbers (DLAs) at low redshift. All CaII absorbers in our sample show associated absorption by other low ions such as MgII and FeII; 45 percent of them have associated NaI absorption. From ionization modelling we conclude that intervening CaII absorption with log N(CaII) >= 11.5 arises in DLAs, sub-DLAs and Lyman-limit systems (LLS) at HI column densities of log N(HI) >= 17.4. Using supplementary HI information for nine of the absorbers we find that the CaII/HI ratio decreases strongly with increasing HI column density, indicating a column-density-dependent dust depletion of Ca. The observed column density distribution function of CaII absorption components follows a relatively steep power law, f(N) proportional to N-beta, with a slope of -beta = -1.68, which again points towards an enhanced dust depletion in high column density systems. The relatively large cross section of these absorbers together with the frequent detection of CaII absorption in high-velocity clouds (HVCs) in the halo of the Milky Way suggests that a considerable fraction of the intervening CaII systems trace (partly) neutral gas structures in the halos and circumgalactic environment of galaxies (i.e., they are HVC analogs). Based on the recently measured detection rate of CaII absorption in the Milky Way HVCs we estimate that the mean (projected) CaII covering fraction of galaxies and their gaseous halos is < f(c,CaII)> = 0.33. Using this value and considering all galaxies with luminosities L >= 0.05 L-star we calculate that the characteristic radial extent of (partly) neutral gas clouds with log N(HI) >= 17.4 around low-redshift galaxies is R-HVC approximate to 55 kpc. KW - galaxies: halos KW - galaxies: formation KW - galaxies: ISM KW - intergalactic medium KW - quasars: absorption lines Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201015566 SN - 0004-6361 VL - 528 IS - 4 PB - EDP Sciences CY - Les Ulis ER -