Overview: As the dominant reservoir of baryons in the Universe, the intergalactic medium (IGM) plays a crucial role in the history and evolution of cosmic structure. The stars and black holes in the first galaxies emitted copious amounts of ionizing radiation, singly ionizing hydrogen and helium at z~10, and later doubly ionizing Helium at z~3, thus reheating and reionizing the cosmos. The IGM evolves into the clumpy cosmic web, which is the source of gas that cools and accretes onto galaxies powering star-formation, and a sink for the metal enriched material, energy, and radiation which galaxies eject. The complex interplay of these processes determines the physical state of the intergalactic gas over cosmic time. Observations of absorption lines in quasar and galaxy spectra from the present until redshift 7 provide a thermal and chemical record of the IGM, enable precision measurements of density fluctuations and the geometry of the early Universe, and provide invaluable insights into the physical processes shaping galaxy formation. In the next few years, advances in telescope instrumentation, the emergence of massive spectroscopic surveys, as well as developments in theory and computation will deepen our understanding of the IGM as a probe of cosmology and the cosmic reionization events. This conference aims to bring together both theorists and observers working on the various astronomical passbands to discuss the latest developments in this exciting field.
Dates: September 18th - 21st, 2018
Deadlines: Abstract submission is now closed. You may still register to attend the meeting until September 1st, 2018.
Venue: Kavli IPMU, Kashiwa, Japan
Organizers: Khee-Gan Lee (Kavli IPMU), Nao Suzuki (Kavli IPMU)
Scientific Organizing Committee:
| Piero Madau (UCSC) | Valentina D'Odorico (INAF/OATS) |
| Matt McQuinn (Washington) | Raghunathan Srianand (IUCAA) |
| Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille (CEA Saclay) | Martin Haehnelt (Cambridge) |
| Joe Hennawi (UCSB) |
Confirmed Speakers:
| Benedetta Ciardi (MPA) | Daniel Stark (Arizona) | Andreu Font-Ribera (UCL) |
| Andrei Mesinger (SNS) | Laura Keating (CITA) | Matteo Viel (INAF-OATS) |
| Andrea Ferrara (SNS) | Masami Ouchi (Tokyo) | Chen Heinrich (JPL) |
| Emma Ryan-Weber (Swinburne) | Naoki Yoshida (Kavli IPMU) | Michael Walther (UCSB) |
| Fred Davies (UCSB) | Christina Eilers (MPIA) | George Becker (UC Riverside) |
| Christophe Yèche (CEA Saclay) | Raul Monsalve (Colorado/McGill) |
Address:
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), the University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa City, Chiba 277-8583, Japan
