I show that advanced simulations of cosmological reionization are able to fit the observed data on the mean transmitted flux in the hydrogen Lyman-alpha line at z~6. At the same time, posteriori models can be constructed that also produce a large value (20%) for the Thompson scattering optical depth, consistent with the WMAP measurements. Thus, it appears that a consistent picture emerges in which early reionization (as suggested by WMAP) is complete by z~6 in accord with the SLOAN data.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0403699,
title = {Reionization, SLOAN, and WMAP: is the Picture Consistent?},
author = {Nickolay Y. Gnedin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0403699},
year = {2009}
}