Revisiting the He II to H I ratio in the Intergalactic Medium

TL;DR

This study measures the He II to H I ratio in the intergalactic medium using quasar absorption spectra, revealing regions with unexpectedly low ratios that challenge simple photo-ionization models and suggest a multiphase, high-temperature environment.

Contribution

It provides new measurements of the He II to H I ratio at high redshift and discusses the implications for the physical state of intergalactic gas, including the presence of multiphase, high-temperature regions.

Findings

Most regions have η > 50, consistent with photo-ionization.

Some regions show η ≈ 10-20, inconsistent with simple models.

High-temperature, multiphase models better explain the observations.

Abstract

We estimate the He II to H I column density ratio, \eta = N(He II)/N(H I), in the intergalactic medium towards the high redshift (z_{em} = 2.885) bright quasar QSO HE 2347-4342 using Voigt-profile fitting of the H I transitions in the Lyman series and the He II Lyman-$\alpha$ transition as observed by the FUSE satellite. In agreement with previous studies, we find that $\eta > 50$ in most of the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest except in four regions where it is much smaller ($\eta \sim 10-20$) and therefore inconsistent with photo-ionization by the UV background flux. We detect O VI and C IV absorption lines associated with two of these regions ($z_{\rm abs}$ = 2.6346 and 2.6498). We show that if we constrain the fit of the H I and/or He II absorption profiles with the presence of metal components, we can accommodate $\eta$ values in the range 15-100 in these systems assuming broadening is intermediate between pure thermal and pure turbulent. While simple photo-ionization models reproduce the observed N(O VI)/N(C IV) ratio, they fail to produce low $\eta$ values contrary to models with high temperature (i.e T $\ge 10^5$ K). The Doppler parameters measured for different species suggest a multiphase nature of the absorbing regions. Therefore, if low $\eta$ values were to be confirmed, we would favor a multi-phase model in which most of the gas is at high temperature ($>$ 10$^5$ K) but the metals and in particular C IV are due to lower temperature ($\sim$ few $10^4$ K) photo-ionized gas.