Trazando la Red Cósmica mediante su Composición Química

CORA S. A.

San Juan

Congreso; XLVII Reunión Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Astronomía; 2004

Asociación Argentina de Astronomía

One of the most impressive results that has emerged from cosmological simulations of structure formation in the universe is the "cosmic web". The cold dark matter model has been successful in describing the distribution of matter on large scales. As collapse of initial density fluctuations proceeds, matter collects in a cosmic web with mildlyoverdense sheets and filaments, with galaxies and galaxy clustersat their intersections. The gas associated to these structures experiences complex physical processes that include heating of the gas falling into the potential well of dark matter halos, radiative cooling, star formation, and thermal and chemical feedback from galaxies. In this way, the intergalactic gas develops a wide range of densities, temperatures and chemical abundances depending if they are within sheets and filaments, or within galaxy clusters, which determines the gas emission at different wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum.In this presentation, we describe theoretical and observational results about the detectability of the baryonic component in its different phases, and its capability to trace the large scale structure of the universe.