PhD defence

From Atoms to the Cosmos: Exploring the Cosmic Web Beyond Collisional Ionisation Equilibrium

• L. Štofanová

Date

Wednesday 13 November 2024

Time

11:30 - 12:30 hour

Address

Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden

Supervisor(s)

• Prof.dr. J.S. Kaastra
• Prof.dr. J. Schaye
• dr. A. Simionescu

Samenvatting

Nowadays, it is well known that hydrogen and helium (and small traces of lithium and beryllium) were created shortly after the Big Bang, while the heavier elements are created in the cores of stars at different evolutionary stages. When these stars explode as supernovae, they expel metals synthesised in their cores to the medium around them. Our Universe, more specifically, the warm-hot intergalactic medium in the cosmic web filaments, the intra-cluster medium of galaxy clusters, and the circum-galactic medium around individual galaxies is full of such metals. By studying the medium of these massive astrophysical objects through spectroscopy, and by studying the impact of different feedback processes on the metal transport on various physical scales, we can get closer to the understanding of the origin and evolution of metals in some of the most massive objects in our Universe.

In this Ph.D. thesis I focused on the spectroscopy of the cosmic web (filaments and galaxy clusters) with current and future X-ray telescopes. I showed that future X-ray micro-calorimeter missions will be sensitive to effects that have not yet been detected before. For example, gas in the cosmic web filaments is often assumed to be in collisional ionisation equilibrium, and the X-ray emitting gas that fills in the halos of galaxy clusters is often assumed to have a single temperature. These assumptions might have been enough in the era of energy resolution with CCD and grating spectrometers, however, that will not be sufficient anymore in the era of X-ray micro-calorimeters.

PhD dissertations

Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.

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