The dynamical and thermodynamic effects of turbulence on the cosmic baryonic fluid

¹ College of Physics, Jilin University Changchun 130012, China
² Center for High Energy Physics, Peking University Beijing 100871, China

^★ Corresponding authors: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 29 June 2025
Accepted: 29 December 2025

Abstract

Both simulations and observations indicate that the so-called missing baryons reside in the intergalactic medium known as the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). In this study we employed the IllustrisTNG50-1 simulation to demonstrate that knowledge of the turbulence in the cosmic baryonic fluid is crucial for correctly understanding both the spatial distribution and the physical origins of the missing baryons in the Universe. First, we find that dynamical effects cause the gas to be detained in low-density and intermediate-density regions, resulting in high baryon fractions, and prevent the convergence of the gas in high-density regions, leading to low baryon fractions. Second, turbulent energy is converted into thermal energy, and the injection and dissipation of turbulent energy have essentially reached a balance from z = 1 to 0. This indicates that the cosmic fluid is in a steady state within this redshift range. Due to turbulent heating, as the redshift decreases, an increasing amount of warm gas is heated and converted into the WHIM, and some even into hot gas. We find that, compared with turbulence in the cosmic fluid, shocks are unimportant in intermediate-density regions and even negligible in high-density regions, both dynamically and thermodynamically. This finding accounts for the origin of the WHIM in terms of both dynamics and thermodynamics, calls into question the traditional view of shock-heating, and highlights the importance of turbulence in shaping the large-scale structure of the Universe, particularly in the evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters. In addition to TNG50-1, we validated our key findings with TNG50-2, TNG100-1, WIGEON, and EAGLE simulations, demonstrating that the spatial resolution, box size, and sub-grid-physics variations do not affect our main conclusions.