Cosmic Matter Distribution: Cosmic Baryon Budget Revisited

Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) provide a powerful tool for measuring the primary cosmological parameters. However, there is a large degree of parameter degeneracy in simultaneous measurements of the matter density, Omega_m, and the Hubble parameter, H_0. In the present paper we use the presently available CMBR data together with measurements of the cosmological baryon-to-photon ratio, eta, from Big Bang nucleosynthesis, and the relative mass ...

About 90% of baryons in the universe have thus far escaped direct observation. This is known as the {\it missing baryon problem}. The Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect (SZ effect) has the potential to directly measure the state of the majority of these missing baryons. The next generation CMB experiments such as AMIBA will provide an unbiased sample of the intergalactic medium through the SZ effect. The existing and upcoming simulations and analytical studies provide a quantitative u...

In this white paper, we summarize current observations of the baryon census at low redshift (Shull, Smith, & Danforth 2012). Measurements of Lya, O-VI, and broad Lya absorbers, together with more careful corrections for metallicity and ionization fraction, can now account for approximately 60% of the baryons in the intergalactic medium (IGM). An additional 5 +/- 3% may reside in the circumgalactic medium (CGM), 7 +/- 2% in galaxies, and 4 +/- 1.5% in clusters. This still leav...

The relic abundances of the light elements synthesized during the first few minutes of the evolution of the Universe provide unique probes of cosmology and the building blocks for stellar and galactic chemical evolution, while also enabling constraints on the baryon (nucleon) density and on models of particle physics beyond the standard model. Recent WMAP analyses of the CBR temperature fluctuation spectrum, combined with other, relevant, observational data, has yielded very ...

For low-redshift cosmology and galaxy formation rates, it is important to account for all the baryons synthesized in the Big Bang. Although galaxies and clusters contain 10% of the baryons, many more reside in the photoionized Lyman-alpha forest and shocked-heated warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) at T = 10^5 to 10^7 K. Current tracers of WHIM at 10^5 to 10^6 K include the O VI 1032, 1038 absorption lines, together with broad Lyman-alpha absorbers (BLAs) and EUV/X-ray abso...

Big-bang nucleosynthesis is one of the cornerstones of the standard cosmology. For almost thirty years its predictions have been used to test the big-bang model to within a fraction of a second of the bang. The concordance that exists between the predicted and observed abundances of D, $^3$He, $^4$He and $^7$Li provides important confirmation of the standard cosmology and leads to the most accurate determination of the baryon density, between $1.7 \times 10^{-31}\gcmm3$ and $...

(Abridged) The nonlinear evolution of a system consisting of baryons and dark matter is generally characterized by strong shocks and discontinuities. The baryons slow down significantly at postshock areas of gravitational strong shocks, which can occur in high overdense as well as low overdense regions. Consequently, the baryon fraction would be nonuniform on large scales. We studied these phenomena with simulation samples produced by the WENO hybrid cosmological hydrodynamic...

Standard big bang nucleosynthesis (BBNS) promises accurate predictions of the primordial abundances of deuterium, helium-3, helium-4 and lithium-7 as a function of a single parameter. Previous measurements have nearly always been interpreted as confirmation of the model (Copi, Schramm & Turner 1995). Here we present a measurement of the deuterium to hydrogen ratio (D/H) in a newly discovered high redshift metal-poor gas cloud at redshift $z=2.504$. This confirms our earlier m...

Among the light elements created in the Big Bang, deuterium is one of the most difficult to detect but is also the one whose abundance depends most sensitively on the density of baryons. Thus, although we still have only a few positive identifications of D at high redshifts--when the D/H ratio was close to its primordial value--they give us the most reliable determination of the baryon density, in excellent agreement with measures obtained from entirely different probes, such...

The evolution of the baryon distribution in different phases, derived from cosmological simulations, are here reported. These computations indicate that presently most of baryons are in a warm-hot intergalactic (WHIM) medium (about 43%) while at z = 2.5 most of baryons constitute the diffuse medium (about 74%). Stars and the cold gas in galaxies represent only 14% of the baryons at z = 0. For z < 4 about a half of the metals are locked into stars while the fraction present in...