The intergalactic medium over the last 10 billion years II: Metal-line absorption and physical conditions

Understand

We investigate the metallicity evolution and content of the intergalactic medium (IGM) and galactic halo gas from z=2->0 using 110-million particle cosmological hydrodynamic simulations.

• We focus on the detectability and physical properties of UV resonance metal-line absorbers observable with Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS).
• We confirm that galactic superwind outflows are required to enrich the IGM to observed levels down to z=0 using three wind prescriptions contrasted to a no-wind simulation.
• Our favoured momentum-conserved wind prescription deposits metals closer to galaxies owing to its moderate energy input, while the more energetic constant wind model enriches the warm-hot IGM 6.4x more.