Jeans smoothing of the Ly forest absorption lines

摘要

We investigate a contribution of the Jeans smoothing to the minimal width of Ly forest lines and discuss how the accounting for this additional broadening affects the inferred parameters of the intergalactic matter equation of state. We estimate a power-law index γ of the equation of state, a temperature at the mean density T_0 and a hydrogen photoionization rate Γ within 4 redshift bins. Furthermore, in each bin we obtain an upper limit on the scale-parameter f_J, which sets the relation between the Jeans length and the characteristic physical size of the absorber clouds.