The sources of intergalactic metals

We study the clustering properties of metals in the intergalactic medium (IGM) as traced by 619 C iv and 81 Si iv absorption components with N≥ 1012 cm−2 and 316 Mg ii and 82 Fe ii absorption components with N≥ 1011.5 cm−2 in 19 high signal-to-noise ratio (60–100 pixel−1), high-resolution (R = 45 000) quasar spectra. C iv and Si iv trace each other closely and their line-of-sight correlation functions ξ(v) exhibit a steep decline at large …