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OATS-DAUT SEMINAR
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Speaker: Tae-Sun Kim (Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, Germany)
Title: The chemical enrichment of the intergalactic medium
Date: Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
Time: 12:00
Venue: Villa Bazzoni
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Abstract: With the advent of high-resolution, high signal-to-noise spectrographs on
10-meter class telescopes, a surprising discovery of triply ionised carbon
associated with the low-density intergalactic medium (IGM) has revealed that
the IGM has been enriched to 10^(-2.5) Solar. As heavy metals are produced
by stars, which are bound in galaxies, the metals in the diffuse IGM provide
an important fossil record of early star formation history and of the feedback
of galactic matter into the ambient IGM. Several scenarios have been proposed
to explain the enrichment of the IGM. Among these, the most promising candidate
is a model where galactic-scale winds are blown by star-forming galaxies. I
will review the current observational measures of the carbon abundance of the
IGM at 0 < z < 6. In addition, I will present the relation between the neutral
hydrogen column density and the triply ionised carbon column density, which
could provide a possible evidence of galactic outflows as the IGM enrichment
mechanism at 2 < z < 3.5 as well as an outflow velocity.
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contact: Valentina D'Odorico (OATS)