Cosmic Matter Distribution: Cosmic Baryon Budget Revisited

We present an estimate of the global budget of baryons in all states, with conservative estimates of the uncertainties, based on all relevant information we have been able to marshal. Most of the baryons today are still in the form of ionized gas, which contributes a mean density uncertain by a factor of about four. Stars and their remnants are a relatively minor component, comprising for our best-guess plasma density only about 17% of the baryons, while populations contribut...

We review the current state of empirical knowledge of the total budget of baryonic matter in the Universe as observed since the epoch of reionization. Our summary examines on three milestone redshifts since the reionization of H in the IGM, z = 3, 1, and 0, with emphasis on the endpoints. We review the observational techniques used to discover and characterize the phases of baryons. In the spirit of the meeting, the level is aimed at a diverse and non-expert audience and addi...

A fair and complete accounting of cosmic baryons now appears possible, because most of them are in states which are either directly observable or reliably constrained by indirect arguments. More than three-quarters of the baryons are probably in hot ionized gas clustering, along with galaxies and dark matter, in the cosmic web. The rest are in galaxies, roughly equally distributed between old stellar populations and star-forming disk populations; within the latter, mass is di...

The large discrepancy between the amount of baryons that were synthesized in Big-Bang and that we detect at $z=0$ locked in stars inside galaxies and in hot/cold gas in galaxies. goup and clusters, is a well known crucial issue for present day cosmology. It is also thought that this riddle is at the backbone of how the ordinary matter has formed, inside dark potential wells, the structures we see today. Then, it is useful to reprint, by means of this archive, the first (pre- ...

I briefly review the main ideas and challenges involved in the computation of the observed baryonic asymmetry of the Universe.

Stars and gas in galaxies, hot intracluster medium, and intergalactic photo-ionized gas make up at most half of the baryons that are expected to be present in the universe. The majority of baryons are still missing and are expected to be hidden in a web of warm-hot intergalactic medium. This matter was shock-heated during the collapse of density perturbations that led to the formation of the relaxed structures that we see today. Finding the missing baryons and thereby produci...

The relic abundance of baryons - the only form of stable matter whose existence we are certain of - is a crucial parameter for many cosmological processes, as well as material evidence that there is new physics beyond the Standard Model. We discuss recent determinations of the cosmological baryon density from analysis of the abundances of light elements synthesised at the end of ``the first three minutes'', and from the observed temperature anisotropies imprinted on small ang...

The similar cosmological energy budgets in visible baryons and dark matter motivate one to consider a common origin for the generation of both. We outline the key features of scenarios that can accommodate a unified framework for the genesis of cosmic matter. In doing so, we provide a brief overview of some of the past and recent developments and discuss the main predictions of a number of models.

The missing baryon problem may now be resolved, but the exact location and physical properties of the diffuse component remains unclear. This problem could be tractable, but requires the combination of new galaxy redshift surveys with new X-ray and radio facilities.

The light element abundances probe the baryon density of the universe within a few minutes of the Big Bang. Of these relics from the earliest universe, deuterium is the baryometer of choice. By comparing its primordial abundance inferred from observations with that predicted by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), the early universe baryon density is derived. This is then compared to independent estimates of the baryon density several hundred thousand years after the Big Bang and ...