Related papers: Keeping the Universe ionised: Photo-heating and th…
Due to their long mean free path, X-rays are expected to have an important impact on cosmic reionization by heating and ionizing the IGM on large scales, especially after simulations have suggested that Population III stars may form in…
The temporal evolution of the ionizing UV background radiation field at high redshift provides a probe of the evolution of the early star formation rate. By comparing the observed levels of absorption in the highest redshift quasar spectra…
The ultraviolet background (UVB) emitted by quasars and galaxies governs the ionization and thermal state of the intergalactic medium (IGM), regulates the formation of high-redshift galaxies, and is thus a key quantity for modeling cosmic…
In this work we investigate the properties of the sources that reionized the intergalactic medium (IGM) in the high-redshift Universe. Using a semi-analytical model aimed at reproducing galaxies and black holes in the first 1.5 Gyr of the…
A model of the density distribution in the intergalactic medium, motivated by that found in numerical simulations, is used to demonstrate the effect of a clumpy IGM and discrete sources on the reionization of the universe. In an…
An ionization front expanding into a neutral medium can be slowed-down significantly by recombinations. In cosmological numerical simulations the recombination rate is often computed using a 'clumping factor', that takes into account that…
We use Gamma-ray burst (GRB) spectra total continuum absorption to estimate the key intergalactic medium (IGM) properties of hydrogen column density ($\mathit{N}\textsc{hxigm}$), metallicity, temperature and ionisation parameter over a…
We investigate whether a single population of first stars could have influenced both the metal enrichment and reionization of the high-redshift intergalactic medium (IGM), by calculating the generated ionizing radiation per unit metal yield…
Recent suggestions of a "photon underproduction crisis" (Kollmeier \etal\ 2014) have generated concern over the intensity and spectrum of ionizing photons in the metagalactic ultraviolet background (UVB). The balance of hydrogen…
The thermal state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at z < 6 constrains the nature and timing of cosmic reionization events, but its inference from the Ly-alpha forest is degenerate with the 3-D structure of the IGM on ~100 kpc scales,…
By depleting the ionizing photon budget available to expand cosmic HII regions, recombining systems (or Lyman limit systems) can have a large impact during (and following) cosmic reionization. Unfortunately, directly resolving such…
Small-scale density fluctuations can significantly affect reionization but are typically modelled quite crudely. Unresolved fluctuations in numerical simulations and analytical calculations are included using a gas clumping factor,…
The modeling of galaxy formation and reionization, two central issues of modern cosmology, relies on the accurate follow-up of the intergalactic medium (IGM). Unfortunately, owing to the complex nature of this medium, the differential…
We present measurements of the intergalactic medium (IGM) temperature within ~5 proper Mpc of seven luminous quasars at z~6. The constraints are obtained from the Doppler widths of Lyman-alpha absorption lines in the quasar near-zones and…
During the epoch of reionization a large number of photons were produced with frequencies below the hydrogen Lyman limit. After redshifting into the closest resonance, these photons underwent multiple scatterings with atoms. We examine the…
The recent EDGES measurements of the global 21-cm signal from the cosmic dawn suggest that the kinetic temperature of the inter-galactic medium (IGM) might be significantly lower compared to its expected value. The colder IGM directly…
The origin of warm ions in the circum-galactic medium (CGM) surrounding massive galaxies remains a mystery. In this paper, we argue that a significant fraction of the observed warm-ion columns may arise in the intergalactic medium (IGM)…
We consider a model of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) in which feedback maintains a constant ratio of cooling time to freefall time throughout the halo, so that the entire CGM is marginally unstable to multiphase condensation. This…
We present a detailed analysis of the ionization and thermal structure of the intergalactic medium (IGM) around a high-redshift QSO using a large suite of cosmological, multi-frequency radiative transfer (RT) simulations, exploring the…
We compute the expected X-ray diffuse background and radiative feedback on the intergalactic medium (IGM) from X-ray binaries prior and during the epoch of reionization. The cosmic evolution of compact binaries is followed using a…