Characterizing Intergalactic Dust with X-ray Halos

Details Characterizing Intergalactic Dust with X-ray Halos Characterizing Intergalactic Dust with X-ray Halos

Jan 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21725010c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #250.10; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

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Scientific paper

By estimating the total mass of metals produced through star formation versus the amount of metals locked up in galaxies and intergalactic gas, researchers have concluded that about half of the metals in the intergalactic medium are locked up in dust grains, with Omega 10-5 (Aguirre 1999). Large dust grains are more likely to survive the processes, such as wind and radiation pressure, that enrich the intergalactic medium. Thus intergalactic dust is likely to be gray, leaving no trace of optical reddening that is typical of interstellar dust. We explore the possibility of detecting large ( 1 micron) intergalactic dust grains through small angle X-ray scattering. A bright X-ray point source, when imaged, will appear surrounded by a halo 10-100 arcseconds wide. The scattering cross section for X-rays increases with the grain radius to the fourth power. For a power law distribution of grain sizes, the optical depth of the universe to soft X-ray scattering reaches 20% for sources out to z=2. We present models of X-ray halos with various grain size distributions and explore the limits a dust-suffused universe places on current and future X-ray missions, the determination of cosmological parameters, and intergalactic enrichment models.

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