Redshift Studies of Scintillating and Non-scintillating Extragalactic Radio Sources: Direct Detection of the Ionized Intergalactic Medium?

dc.contributor.authorOjha, Roopesh
dc.contributor.authorPursimo, Tapio
dc.contributor.authorJauncey, David L.
dc.contributor.authorLovell, James E.
dc.contributor.authorMacquart, Jean-Pierre
dc.contributor.authorDutka, Michael S.
dc.date.accessioned2020-04-28T16:05:58Z
dc.date.available2020-04-28T16:05:58Z
dc.date.issued2008
dc.descriptionFrontiers of Astrophysics: A Celebration of NRAO’s 50 th Anniversary ASP Conference Series, Vol. 395, 2008 A. H. Bridle, J. J. Condon, and G. C. Hunten_US
dc.description.abstractInterstellar scintillation has been shown to be primarily responsible for intraday variability exhibited by extragalactic sources at centimeter wavelengths. The recent Micro-Arcsecond Scintillation-Induced Variability (MASIV) survey has shown that 56% of flat-spectrum extragalactic radio sources scintillate; such behaviour is both too common and too important to ignore. A study of the physical properties of scintillating sources is severely handicapped by the absence of reliable redshift measurements for most such objects. This paper presents new redshifts obtained at the 2.6m Nordic Optical Telescope in La Palma, Spain. It also presents a critical evaluation of redshifts obtained from the literature. The entire dataset is then used to examine any difference in the redshift distributions of scintillating and non-scintillating extragalactic radio sources. We report a strong formal detection, with 98% confidence, of a redshift dependence on the fraction of scintillators with a deficit of scintillating sources above a redshift of ∼ 2. This deficit is consistent with angular broadening due to scattering in the intergalactic medium, which then makes the higher-redshift sources too large to exhibit scintillation due to the interstellar medium of our Galaxy. If confirmed, this constitutes a detection of scattering due to the ionized IGM at z> 2 resulting from intergalactic turbulence and thus detection of energy input into the IGM. More redshifts are necessary, however, to rule out selection effects including the possibility that the deficit of scintillating sources at high redshift simply results from the paucity of measured redshifts for weaker sources. A companion poster (Lazio et al., p. 372) presents a related multi-wavelength VLBA program to study the cores of scintillating and non-scintillating AGN and search for indications of an IGM.en_US
dc.description.urihttp://aspbooks.org/custom/publications/paper/395-0375.htmlen_US
dc.format.extent1 pageen_US
dc.genreconference paper and proceedingsen_US
dc.identifierdoi:10.13016/m24xas-ygqz
dc.identifier.citationOjha, Roopesh; Pursimo, Tapio; Jauncey, David L.; Lovell, James E.; Macquart, Jean-Pierre; Dutka, Michael S.; Redshift Studies of Scintillating and Non-scintillating Extragalactic Radio Sources: Direct Detection of the Ionized Intergalactic Medium?; Frontiers of Astrophysics: A Celebration of NRAO's 50th Anniversary (2008); http://aspbooks.org/custom/publications/paper/395-0375.htmlen_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/18353
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherAstronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Seriesen_US
dc.relation.isAvailableAtThe University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
dc.relation.ispartofUMBC Physics Department Collection
dc.relation.ispartofUMBC Center for Space Sciences and Technology (CSST) / Center for Research and Exploration in Space Sciences & Technology II (CRSST II)
dc.rightsThis item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
dc.rights© Copyright 1988 - 2020 - Astronomical Society of the Pacific
dc.titleRedshift Studies of Scintillating and Non-scintillating Extragalactic Radio Sources: Direct Detection of the Ionized Intergalactic Medium?en_US
dc.typeTexten_US

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