Galactic winds in the intergalactic medium

Abstract

We have performed hydrodynamical simulations to investigate the effects of galactic winds on the high-redshift (z=3) universe. Strong winds suppress the formation of low-mass galaxies significantly, and the metals carried by them produce C IV absorption lines with properties in reasonable agreement with observations. The winds have little effect on the statistics of the H I absorption lines, because the hot gas bubbles blown by the winds fill only a small fraction of the volume and because they tend to escape into the voids, thereby leaving the filaments that produce these lines intact.