Related papers: Constraints on First-Light Ionizing Sources from O…
Current data of high-redshift absorption-line systems imply that hydrogen reionization occurred before redshifts of about 5. Previous works on reionization by the first stars or quasars have shown that such scenarios are described by a…
Cosmic Reionization imprints its signature on the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Advances in CMB telescopes have already placed a significant constraint on the history of reionization. As…
The epoch of reionization is a milestone of cosmological structure formation, marking the birth of the first objects massive enough to yield large numbers of ionizing photons. The mechanism and timescale of reionization remain largely…
We derive a constraint on patchy screening of the cosmic microwave background from inhomogeneous reionization, using off-diagonal TB and TT correlations in WMAP-7 temperature/polarization data. We interpret this as a constraint on the rms…
We present the first constraints on the electron optical depth to reionization, $\tau_{\mathrm{e}}$, from the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest alone for physically motivated reionization models that match the reionization's end-point, $z_{\rm{end}}$,…
The relatively large Thomson optical depth, tau_e, inferred recently from the WMAP observations suggests that the Universe was reionized in a more complex manner than previously believed. However, the value of tau_e provides only an…
The optical depth $\tau$ is the least well determined parameter in the standard model of cosmology, and one whose precise value is important for both understanding reionization and for inferring fundamental physics from cosmological…
This paper focuses on cosmological constraints derived from analysis of WMAP data alone. A simple LCDM cosmological model fits the five-year WMAP temperature and polarization data. The basic parameters of the model are consistent with the…
The epoch of reionisation is a key phase in cosmic history, characterised by the ionisation of the intergalactic medium by the first luminous sources. In this work, we constrain the reionisation history of the Universe using data from the…
The primordial gas in the earliest dark matter halos, collapsing at redshifts around z=20, with masses M_halo=10^6 M_sun, and virial temperatures T_vir<10^4K, relied on the presence of molecules for cooling. Several theoretical studies have…
The first-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe data suggest a high optical depth for Thomson scattering of 0.17 +/- 0.04, implying that the universe was reionized at an early epoch, z ~ 20. Such early reionization is likely to be…
We investigate the possibility that the Universe is reionized by the decay products of heavy particles. In particular we study under which circumstances this decay may produce a significant reionization at high redshift ($z \simeq 20$), as…
We study the reionization history of the Universe in cosmological models with non-Gaussian density fluctuations, taking them to have a renormalized $\chi^2$ probability distribution function parametrized by the number of degrees of freedom,…
Improved measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background polarization from Planck allows a detailed study of reionization beyond the average optical depth. The lower value of the optical depth disfavours an early onset and an early…
Based on the gamma-ray burst (GRB) event rate at redshifts of $4 \leq z \leq 12$, which is assessed by the spectral peak energy-to-luminosity relation recently found by Yonetoku et al., we observationally derive the star formation rate…
Based on the work by Mitra, Choudhury & Ferrara (2010), we obtain model-independent constraints on reionization from cosmic microwave background (CMB) and QSO absorption line data by decomposing the function N_{ion}(z) (the number of…
If dark matter decay or annihilate, a large amount of energy and particles would be released into the cosmic plasma. Therefore, they could modify the thermal and ionization history of our universe, then leave footprints on the cosmic…
We use a compilation of cosmic microwave anisotropy data to constrain the epoch of reionization in the Universe, as a function of cosmological parameters. We consider spatially-flat cosmologies, varying the matter density $\Omega_0$ (the…
On large angular scales, the polarization of the CMB contains information about the evolution of the average ionization during the epoch of reionization. Interpretation of the polarization spectrum usually requires the assumption of a fixed…
Recently, Planck measured a value of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) optical depth due to electron scattering of $\tau=0.066 \pm 0.016$. Here we show that this low value leaves essentially no room for an early partial reionisation of…