Bibcode
Nicastro, F.; Shull, J. M.; Paerels, F. B. S.; Hornschemeier, A. E.; Garcia, M. R.
Referencia bibliográfica
American Astronomical Society Meeting 207, #16.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 37, p.1179
Fecha de publicación:
12
2005
Número de citas
0
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
We present detailed simulations of the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium
(WHIM) with the gratings of Constellation-X. Simulations are based on
the extrapolation of the expected number density of OVII WHIM systems
from hydrodynamical simulations of the local Universe, up to redshift of
z=1 and down to an OVII column density of 1014
cm-2, and assume random metallicity and internal turbulence
velocities between 0.05-0.3 Solar and 0-150 km s-1
respectively. We simulated 100 ks Constelation-X/gratings exposures
using a relatively bright (0.5-2 keV flux of 0.1 mCrab) quasar at z=1 as
background X-ray source. About 30 of such sigtlines are available in the
RASS. We show that about 20-30 percent of the expected OVII-WHIM systems
will be detected in OVII K-alpha along one of these lines of sight with
a grating resolving power of R=300, while this fraction rises to about
unity with a resolving power of R > 3000 (sufficient to resolve the O
lines in gas with a temperature of about 1e6 K). A resolving power of
R=3000 will also allow us to detect the associated OVIII Ly-alpha lines
and so to estimate a metallicity-independent ionization correction for
most of the systems. We also explored a grating configuration that
covered up to 60 A in wavelength, so to include the CV K-alpha spectral
region, and estimated that C/N, C/O and O/N relative metallicity studies
can be performed on about half of the expected systems with a resolving
power of R=3000, but only for about 1-5 percent of the systems at a 10
times lower resolving power.