The warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) research area investigates the diffuse, highly ionized baryonic component of the cosmic web at temperatures of roughly 10⁵–10⁷ K, believed to host a substantial fraction of the “missing” baryons at low redshift. This field combines cosmological simulations with multiwavelength observations, particularly soft X-ray and far-ultraviolet spectroscopy, to detect weak absorption or emission signatures from ions such as O VI, O VII, and O VIII in filaments between galaxies. Research focuses on WHIM thermodynamics, metal enrichment, shock-heating processes, and its role in structure formation, baryon cycling, and feedback from galaxies and active galactic nuclei.
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