In gravitational instability models, \lya absorption arises from a continuous
fluctuating medium, so that spectra provide a non-linear one-dimensional
``map'' of the underlying density field. We characterise this continuous
absorption using statistical measures applied to the distribution of absorbed
flux. We describe two simple members of a family of statistics which we apply
to simulated spectra in order to show their sensitivity as probes of
cosmological parameters (H0, Ω, the initial power spectrum of
matter fluctuations) and the physical state of the IGM. We make use of SPH
simulation results to test the flux statistics, as well as presenting a
preliminary application to Keck HIRES data.Comment: Contribution to proceedings of the 18th Texas Symposium on
Relativistic Astrophysics (eds A. Olinto, J. Frieman and D. Schramm, World
Scientific),Chicago, December 1996, 3 pages, LaTeX (sprocl), 2 figures. Also
available at http://www-astronomy.mps.ohio-state.edu/~racc