Quasars as probes of cosmological reionization
Abstract
Quasars are the most luminous non-transient sources in the epoch of cosmological reionization (i.e., which ended a billion years after the Big Bang, corresponding to a redshift of z ~ 5), and are powerful probes of the inter-galactic medium at that time. This review covers current efforts to identify high-redshift quasars and how they have been used to constrain the reionization history. This includes a full description of the various processes by which neutral hydrogen atoms can absorb/scatter ultraviolet photons, and which lead to the Gunn-Peterson effect, dark gap and dark pixel analyses, quasar near zones and damping wing absorption. Finally, the future prospects for using quasars as probes of reionization are described.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1511.01107,
title = {Quasars as probes of cosmological reionization},
author = {Daniel J. Mortlock},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.01107},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
Book chapter in 'Understanding the Epoch of Cosmic Reionization: Challenges and Progress', Springer International Publishing, ed. Andrei Mesinger, ISBN 978-3-319-21956-1