The filling factor of intergalactic metals at redshift z=3

TL;DR

This study uses cosmological simulations and synthetic spectra to determine that intergalactic metals at redshift 3 are primarily dispersed by low-mass galaxies, requiring widespread enrichment of the IGM to match observations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that low-mass galaxies are the main contributors to IGM metal enrichment at z=3, with metals dispersed over large distances beyond galaxy virial radii.

Findings

Enrichment by low-mass galaxies (>10^10 M_sun) explains observations.

Over 10% of volume and 50% of baryonic mass must be metal-polluted.

Galaxies must eject metals >100 kpc to reproduce observed CIV optical depths.

Abstract

Observations of quasar absorption line systems reveal that the z=3 intergalactic medium (IGM) is polluted by heavy elements down to HI optical depths tau_HI<<10. What is not yet clear, however, is what fraction of the volume needs to be enriched by metals and whether it suffices to enrich only regions close to galaxies in order to reproduce the observations. We use gas density fields derived from large cosmological simulations, together with synthetic quasar spectra and imposed, model metal distributions to investigate what enrichment patterns can reproduce the observed median optical depth of CIV as a function of tau_HI. Our models can only satisfy the observational constraints if the z=3 IGM was primarily enriched by galaxies that reside in low-mass (m_tot<10^10 M_sun) haloes that can eject metals out to distances >10^2 kpc. Galaxies in more massive haloes cannot possibly account for the observations as they are too rare for their outflows to cover a sufficiently large fraction of the volume. Galaxies need to enrich gas out to distances that are much greater than the virial radii of their host haloes. Assuming the metals to be well mixed on small scales, our modeling requires that the fractions of the simulated volume and baryonic mass that are polluted with metals are, respectively, >10% and >50% in order to match observations.