We report on the observed properties of the plasma revealed through high signal-to-noise (S/N) observations of 54 intervening O VI absorption systems containing 85 O VI and 133 H I components in a blind survey of 14 QSOs observed at ~18 km s-1 resolu
tion with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) over a redshift path of 3.52 at z < 0.5. Simple systems with one or two H I components and one O VI component comprise 50% of the systems. For a sample of 45 well-aligned absorption components where the temperature can be estimated, we find evidence for cool photoionized gas in 31 (69%) and warm gas (6 > log T > 5) in 14 (31%) of the components. The total hydrogen content of the 14 warm components can be estimated from the temperature and the measured value of log N(H I). The very large implied values of log N(H) range from 18.38 to 20.38 with a median of 19.35. The metallicity, [O/H], in the 6 warm components with log T > 5.45 ranges from -1.93 to 0.03 with a median value of -1.0 dex. Ground-based galaxy redshift studies reveal that most of the absorbers we detect sample gas in the IGM extending 200 to 600 kpc beyond the closest associated galaxy. We estimate the warm aligned O VI absorbers contain (4.1+/-1.1)% of the baryons at low z. The warm plasma traced by the aligned O VI and H I absorption contains nearly as many baryons as are found in galaxies.
Ultraviolet observations of the QSO 3C 263 (zem = 0.652) with COS and FUSE reveal O VI absorption systems at z = 0.06342 and 0.14072 . WIYN multi-object spectrograph observations provide information about the galaxies associated with the absorbers. T
he multi-phase system at z = 0.06342 traces cool photoionized gas and warm collisionally ionized gas associated with a L ~ 0.31L* compact spiral emission line galaxy with an impact parameter of 63 kpc. The cool photoionized gas in the absorber is well modeled with log U ~ -2.6, log N(H) ~17.8, log n(H) ~ -3.3 and [Si/H] = -0.14pm0.23. The collisionally ionized gas containing C IV and O VI probably arises in cooling shock heated transition temperature gas with log T ~ 5.5. The absorber is likely tracing circumgalactic gas enriched by gas ejected from the spiral emission line galaxy. The simple system at z = 0.14072 only contains O VI and broad and narrow H I. The O VI with b = 33.4pm11.9 km s-1 is likely associated with the broad H I {lambda}1215 absorption with b = 86.7pm15.4 km s-1. The difference in Doppler parameters implies the detection of a very large column of warm gas with log T = 5.61(+0.16, -0.25), log N(H) = 19.54(+0.26, -0.44) and [O/H] = -1.48 (+0.46, -0.26). This absorber is possibly associated with a 1.6L* absorption line galaxy with an impact parameter of 617 kpc although an origin in warm filament gas or in the halo of a fainter galaxy is more likely.
We investigate the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in the redshift interval z=1.7--3.2 by studying the small-scale fluctuations in the Lyman alpha forest transmitted flux. We apply a wavelet filtering technique to eighteen high reso
lution quasar spectra obtained with the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES), and compare these data to synthetic spectra drawn from a suite of hydrodynamical simulations in which the IGM thermal state and cosmological parameters are varied. From the wavelet analysis we obtain estimates of the IGM thermal state that are in good agreement with other recent, independent wavelet-based measurements. We also perform a reanalysis of the same data set using the Lyman alpha forest flux probability distribution function (PDF), which has previously been used to measure the IGM temperature-density relation. This provides an important consistency test for measurements of the IGM thermal state, as it enables a direct comparison of the constraints obtained using these two different methodologies. We find the constraints obtained from wavelets and the flux PDF are formally consistent with each other, although in agreement with previous studies, the flux PDF constraints favour an isothermal or inverted IGM temperature-density relation. We also perform a joint analysis by combining our wavelet and flux PDF measurements, constraining the IGM thermal state at z=2.1 to have a temperature at mean density of T0/[10^3 K]=17.3 +/- 1.9 and a power-law temperature-density relation exponent gamma=1.1 +/- 0.1 (1 sigma). Our results are consistent with previous observations that indicate there may be additional sources of heating in the IGM at z<4.
