Scintillation as a probe of the intergalactic medium.

Most of the baryons in the low-redshift Universe reside in a warm/hot component which is difficult to detect with standard absorption/emission-line techniques. We propose to use quasar refractive scintillation as a useful, complementary probe for such ionized, intergalactic gas. In particular, an application to the case of the intracluster medium is presented. We show that clusters located at z≈0.02 should produce a source rms intensity fluctuation at 50–100 GHz of several tens of per cent and on time-scales ranging from days to months, depending on the projected location of the source on the foreground cluster. However, in order to produce such a signal, the source needs to be very compact. This effect, if observed, can be used as an independent test of the baryonic mass fraction in clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]