1995/04/27 by Michael Rauch, Martin G. Haehnelt · 19 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Baryon #Big Bang nucleosynthesis #Galaxy #Intergalactic medium #Ion #Ionization #Line-of-sight #Lyman limit #Lyman-alpha forest #Nuclear physics research studies #Nucleosynthesis #Omega #Physics #Redshift #Scientific Research and Discoveries #Spacecraft and Cryogenic Technologies #Stars #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/275.1.l76
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 275(1), L76-L78 (Oxford University Press) · 6 pages, compressed postscript file
arxiv created 1995/04/27 · openalex publication_date 1995/07/01 · arxiv updated 2016/06/08 · openalex created_date 2022/05/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Estimates of Ωbaryon from primordial nucleosynthesis, together with standard assumptions about the ionization state of low column density Lyman α forest clouds, can be used to determine an upper limit for the cloud thickness along the line of sight. This upper limit provides significant constraints on the axial ratio of the absorbers and on the overall fraction of the baryonic matter contained in these objects if the recently measured large values for their transverse size are representative. The absorbers have to be considerably flattened structures and may possibly contain a substantial fraction of the baryonic matter at high redshift.