Search arXivSearch

arXiv · 0806.3971

Bent-Double Radio Sources as Probes of Intergalactic Gas

Abstract

As the most common environment in the universe, groups of galaxies are likely to contain a significant fraction of the missing baryons in the form of intergalactic gas. The density of this gas is an important factor in whether ram pressure stripping and strangulation affect the evolution of galaxies in these systems. We present a method for measuring the density of intergalactic gas using bent-double radio sources that is independent of temperature, making it complementary to current absorption line measurements. We use this method to probe intergalactic gas in two different environments: inside a small group of galaxies as well as outside of a larger group at a 2 Mpc radius and measure total gas densities of $4 \pm 1_{-2}^{+6} \times 10^{-3}$ and $9 \pm 3_{-5}^{+10} \times 10^{-4}$ per cubic centimeter (random and systematic errors) respectively. We use X-ray data to place an upper limit of $2 \times 10^6$ K on the temperature of the intragroup gas in the small group.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

E. Freeland, R. F. Cardoso, E. Wilcots. 2008-06-24. Bent-Double Radio Sources as Probes of Intergalactic Gas. https://doi.org/10.1086/591443

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Bayesian reconstruction of the cosmological large-scale structure: methodology, inverse algorithms and numerical optimization

We address the inverse problem of cosmic large-scale structure reconstruction from a Bayesian perspective. For a linear data model, a number of known and novel reconstruction schemes, which differ in terms of the underlying signal prior, data likelihood, and numerical inverse extra-regularization schemes are derived and classified. The Bayesian methodology presented in this paper tries to unify and extend the following methods: Wiener-filtering, Tikhonov regularization, Ridge regression, Maximum Entropy, and inverse regularization techniques. The inverse techniques considered here are the asymptotic regularization, the Jacobi, Steepest Descent, Newton-Raphson, Landweber-Fridman, and both linear and non-linear Krylov methods based on Fletcher-Reeves, Polak-Ribiere, and Hestenes-Stiefel Conjugate Gradients. The structures of the up-to-date highest-performing algorithms are presented, based on an operator scheme, which permits one to exploit the power of fast Fourier transforms. Using such an implementation of the generalized Wiener-filter in the novel ARGO-software package, the different numerical schemes are benchmarked with 1-, 2-, and 3-dimensional problems including structured white and Poissonian noise, data windowing and blurring effects. A novel numerical Krylov scheme is shown to be superior in terms of performance and fidelity. These fast inverse methods ultimately will enable the application of sampling techniques to explore complex joint posterior distributions. We outline how the space of the dark-matter density field, the peculiar velocity field, and the power spectrum can jointly be investigated by a Gibbs-sampling process. Such a method can be applied for the redshift distortions correction of the observed galaxies and for time-reversal reconstructions of the initial density field.

astro-ph

Intensity Scintillation and Astronomical Quantum Observation

Holography is 3D imaging which can record intensity and phase at the same time. The importance of construct hologram is holographic recording and wavefront reconstruction. It is surprised that holography be discovered in study interstellar scintillation for pulsar provide a coherent light source recently. I think that is speckle hologram and speckle interference(i.e. intensity interference), and use modern technique which include phased array,CCD, digital signal processing and supercomputer can achieve that digital and computer holography from radio to X-ray astronomy. This means we can use it to image the universe and beyond the limited of telescope for cosmos provide much coherent light from pulsar,maser, black hole to 21cm recombination line. It gives a probe to the medium of near the black hole et al. From those coherent light sources in the sky, we can uncover one different universe that through astronomical quantum observation which use intensity interference.

astro-ph

Synthesis of Taylor Phase Screens with Karhunen-Loeve Basis Functions

Phase screens above a telescope pupil represent the variation of the phase of the electromagnetic field induced by atmospheric turbulence. Instances drawn from such statistics are represented by a vector of random phase amplitudes which are coefficients of a linear superposition of two-dimensional basis functions across the pupil. This work shortly reviews Fried's analysis of this modal decomposition for the case of Kolmogorov statistics of the phase covariance as a function of separation in the pupil plane. We focus on the numerical synthesis of phase screens. The statistically independent modes are transformed into the eigen-modes of a gradient matrix as time-dependence is introduced such that on short time scales the instances of the phase screens are rigidly shifted into a direction imposed by some wind velocity - known as the Taylor frozen screen approximation. This simple technique factorizes spatial and temporal variables and aims at binding the time dependence of the phase screens to the few expansion coefficients of the basis functions that obey a stochastic time-dependent differential equation.

astro-ph