Published in Rev. Mod. Phys. 81:969, 2009
astro-ph/0901.0941

For a PDF version of the article, click here.

THE WARM IONIZED MEDIUM IN SPIRAL GALAXIES

L. M. Haffner
Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin USA, 53706

R.-J. Dettmar
Astronomisches Institut, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

J. E. Beckman
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, Spain

K. Wood
University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland

J. D. Slavin
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

C. Giammanco
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain

G. J. Madsen
School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

A. Zurita
Departamento de Física Teórica y del Cosmos, Universidade de Granada, Granada, Spain

R. J. Reynolds
Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA


Abstract. This article reviews observations and models of the diffuse ionized gas that permeates the disk and halo of our Galaxy and others. It was inspired by a series of invited talks presented during an afternoon scientific session of the 65th birthday celebration for Professor Carl Heiles held at Arecibo Observatory in August 2004. This review is in recognition of Carl's long standing interest in and advocacy for studies of the ionized as well as the neutral components of the interstellar medium.


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