Speaker
Dr
Charles Danforth
(University of Colorado)
Description
The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on HST has been in operation for nearly four years and has accumulated a library of ~400 AGN sight lines. Many of these are suitable for probing the low-redshift IGM for HI (Lyα forest) and metal-ion absorbers. The result is an unprecedented view of the local (z<1) IGM several times larger and more sensitive than previous surveys. I will present initial results from the COS IGM absorber survey: correlations between IGM absorbers and galaxies/large-scale structure, the current state of the baryon census, evidence for evolution in the IGM since z=0.5, and work on the physical scales of IGM absorbers.
