Cosmological Halos: A Search for the Ionized Intergalactic Medium

Abstract

Standard big bang nucleosynthesis predicts the average baryon density of the Universe to be a few percent of the critical density. Only about one tenth of the predicted baryons have been seen. A plausible respository for the missing baryons is in a diffuse ionized intergalactic medium (IGM). In an attempt to measure the IGM we searched for Thomson-scattered halos around strong high redshift radio sources. Observations of the radio source 1935-692 were made with the Australia Telescope Compact Array. We assumed a uniform IGM, and isotropic steady emission of 1935-692 for a duration between 10^7 - 10^8 years. A model of the expected halo visibility function was used in χ^2 fits to place upper limits on Ω_{IGM}. The upper limits varied depending on the methods used to characterize systematic errors in the data. The results are 2/sigma limits of Ω_{IGM} < 0.65. While not yet at the sensitivity level to test primordial nucleosynthesis, improvements on the technique will probably allow this in future studies.