The COS-legacy survey of C IV absorbers: properties and origins of the
  intervening systems
  We present here results from a survey of intervening C IV absorbers at $z <
0.16$ conducted using 223 sightlines from the Hubble Spectroscopic Legacy
Archive. Most systems (83%) out of the total sample of 69 have simple
kinematics with 1 or 2 C IV components. In the 22 C IV systems with well
constrained H I column densities, the temperatures from the $b$-values imply
predominantly photoionized plasma ($T\leq 10^5$ K) and non-thermal dynamics.
These systems also have solar or higher metallicities. We obtain a C IV line
density of $d\mathcal{N}/dX = 5.1\pm 1.0$ for $\log
[N(C~IV)~(cm^{-2})]\geq12.9$, and $\Omega_{C~IV}=(8.01\pm 1.62) \times 10^{-8}$
for $12.9 \leq \log [N(C~IV)~(cm^{-2})] \leq 15.0$. The C IV bearing diffuse
gas in the $z < 0.16$ Universe has a metallicity of
$(2.07~{\pm}~0.43)~\times~10^{-3}$ Z$_{\odot}$, an order of magnitude more than
the metal abundances in the IGM at high redshifts ($z \gtrsim 5$), and
consistent with the slow build-up of metals in the diffuse circum/intergalactic
space with cosmic time. For $z<0.015$ (complete above $L>0.01L^\star$), the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey provides a tentative evidence of declining covering
fraction for strong C IV ($N>10^{13.5}~cm^{-2}$) with $\rho$ (impact parameter)
and $\rho/R_\mathrm{vir}$. However, the increase at high separations suggests
that strong systems are not necessarily coincident with such galaxies. We also
find that strong C IV absorption at $z<0.051$ is not coincident with galaxy
over-dense regions complete for $L>0.13L^\star$
