Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Simulating The Effects Of Intergalactic Gray Dust, Rac Croft, R Dave, L Hernquist, N Katz

Astronomy Department Faculty Publication Series

Using a high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamic simulation, we present a method to constrain extinction due to intergalactic gray dust based on the observed magnitudes of distant Type Ia supernovae. We apply several simple prescriptions to relate the intergalactic dust density to the gas density in the simulation, thereby obtaining dust extinctions that may be directly compared with the observed distribution of supernova magnitudes. Our analysis is sensitive to the spatial distribution of gray dust but is not dependent on its intrinsic properties, such as its opacity or grain size. We present an application of our technique to the supernova data of …