Searching for cosmic missing baryons with DIOS -- Diffuse Intergalactic Oxygen Surveyor --

Abstract

Approximately 30 to 50 percent of the total baryons in the present universe is supposed to take a form of warm/hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) whose X-ray continuum emission is very weak. In order to carry out a direct and homogeneous survey of elusive cosmic missing baryons, we propose a dedicated soft-X-ray mission, {\it DIOS} (Diffuse Intergalactic Oxygen Surveyor). The unprecedented energy resolution ($\sim 2$eV) of the XSA (X-ray Spectrometer Array) on-board {\it DIOS} enables us to identify WHIM with gas temperature $T=10^{6-7}$K and overdensity $δ=10-100$ located at $z<0.3$ through emission lines of O{\sc vii} and O{\sc viii}. {\it DIOS}, hopefully launched in several years, promises to open a new window of detection and characterization of cosmic missing baryons, and to provide yet another important and complementary tool to trace the large-scale structure of the universe.