@article{TepperGarciaRichterSchayeetal.2011,
  author    = {Tepper-Garcia, Thorsten and Richter, Philipp and Schaye, Joop and Booth, C. M. and Vecchia, Claudio Dalla and Theuns, Tom and Wiersma, Robert P. C.},
  title     = {Absorption signatures of warm-hot gas at low redshift o vi},
  series = {Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
  volume    = {413},
  journal   = {Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell},
  address   = {Hoboken},
  issn      = {0035-8711},
  doi       = {10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.18123.x},
  pages     = {190 -- 212},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {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.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{TepperGarciaRichterSchayeetal.2012,
  author    = {Tepper-Garcia, Thorsten and Richter, Philipp and Schaye, Joop and Booth, C. M. and Dalla Vecchia, Claudio and Theuns, Tom},
  title     = {Absorption signatures of warm-hot gas at low redshift: broad H?i Lya absorbers},
  series = {Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
  volume    = {425},
  journal   = {Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
  number    = {3},
  publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell},
  address   = {Hoboken},
  issn      = {0035-8711},
  doi       = {10.1111/j.1365-2966.2012.21545.x},
  pages     = {1640 -- 1663},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {We investigate the physical state of H?i absorbing gas at low redshift (z = 0.25) using a subset of cosmological, hydrodynamic simulations from the OverWhelmingly Large Simulations project, focusing in particular on broad (bHI=40 km s-1) H?i Lya absorbers (BLAs), which are believed to originate in shock-heated gas in the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). Our fiducial model, which includes radiative cooling by heavy elements and feedback by supernovae and active galactic nuclei, predicts that by z = 0.25 nearly 60?per cent of the gas mass ends up at densities and temperatures characteristic of the WHIM and we find that half of this fraction is due to outflows. The standard H?i observables (distribution of H?i column densities NH?I, distribution of Doppler parameters bHI, bHINH?I correlation) and the BLA line number density predicted by our simulations are in remarkably good agreement with observations. BLAs arise in gas that is hotter, more highly ionized and more enriched than the gas giving rise to typical Lya forest absorbers. The majority of the BLAs arise in warm-hot [log?(T/?K) similar to 5] gas at low (log?? < 1.5) overdensities. On average, thermal broadening accounts for at least 60?per cent of the BLA linewidth, which in turn can be used as a rough indicator of the thermal state of the gas. Detectable BLAs account for only a small fraction of the true baryon content of the WHIM at low redshift. In order to detect the bulk of the mass in this gas phase, a sensitivity at least one order of magnitude better than achieved by current ultraviolet spectrographs is required. We argue that BLAs mostly trace gas that has been shock heated and enriched by outflows and that they therefore provide an important window on a poorly understood feedback process.},
  language  = {en}
}