Related papers: Large-Scale Fluctuations in the HeII Lyman-alpha F…
The radiation background above the ionization edge of HeII varies strongly during and after helium reionization, because the attenuation length of such photons is relatively short (<40 Mpc) and because the ionizing sources (quasars) are…
Recent He II Lyman-alpha forest observations from 2.0 < z < 3.2 show large fluctuations in the optical depth at z > 2.7. These results point to a fluctuating He-ionizing background, which may be due to the end of helium reionization of this…
After quasars ionize intergalactic HeII at z~3, a large radiation field builds up above the HeII ionization edge. Unlike the background responsible for HI ionizations, this field should be highly variable, thanks to the scarcity of bright…
Previous studies of the 2.2 < z< 2.7 HeII Lyman-alpha forest measured much larger ionizing background fluctuations than are anticipated theoretically. We re-analyze recent Hubble Space Telescope data from the two HeII sightlines that have…
Extremely large opaque troughs in the Lyman-alpha forest have been interpreted as a sign of an extended reionization process below z~6. Such features are impossible to reproduce with simple models of the intergalactic ionizing background…
Large variations in the effective optical depth of the He II Ly$\alpha$ forest have been observed at $z\gtrsim2.7$, but the physical nature of these variations is uncertain: either the Universe is still undergoing the process of He II…
We explore the impact of spatial fluctuations in the intergalactic medium temperature on the Lyman-alpha forest flux power spectrum near z ~ 3. We develop a semianalytic model to examine temperature fluctuations resulting from inhomogeneous…
Recent observations have shown that the scatter in opacities among coeval segments of the Lyman-alpha forest increases rapidly at z > 5. In this paper, we assess whether the large scatter can be explained by fluctuations in the ionizing…
High-redshift QSO spectra show large spatial fluctuations in the Ly-alpha opacity of the intergalactic medium on surprisingly large scales at z>~5.5. We present a radiative transfer simulation of cosmic reionization driven by galaxies that…
Recent observations of the Lyman-alpha forest show large-scale spatial variations in the intergalactic Lyman-alpha opacity that grow rapidly with redshift at z>5, far in excess of expectations from empirically motivated models. Previous…
The variations in Ly$\alpha$ forest opacity observed at $z>5.3$ between lines of sight to different background quasars are too strong to be caused by fluctuations in the density field alone. The leading hypothesis for the cause of this…
Interpretation of He II Ly{\alpha} absorption spectra after the epoch of He II reionization requires knowledge of the He II ionizing background. While past work has modelled the evolution of the average background, the standard cosmological…
The Lyman-alpha forest at z >~ 5.5 shows strong scatter in the mean transmission even when smoothed over very large spatial scales, >~ 50 Mpc/h. This has been interpreted as a signature of strongly fluctuating radiation fields, or patchy…
We present statistics of HeII Lya transmission spikes and large-scale absorption troughs using archival high-resolution ($R=\lambda /\Delta \lambda \simeq 12,500$-$18,000$) far-UV spectra of eight HeII-transparent quasars obtained with the…
Three independent observational studies have now detected a narrow (\Delta z ~ 0.5) dip centred at z=3.2 in the otherwise smooth redshift evolution of the Lya forest effective optical depth. This feature has previously been interpreted as…
The reionization of helium is thought to occur at $2.5\lesssim z\lesssim4$, marking the last phase transition and final global heating event of the intergalactic medium (IGM). Since it is driven by rare quasars, helium reionization should…
Recent observations suggest that helium became fully ionized around redshift z ~ 3. The HeII optical depth derived from the Lyman-alpha forest decreases substantially from this period to z ~ 2; moreover, it fluctuates strongly near z ~ 3…
It appears inevitable that reionization processes would have produced large-scale temperature fluctuations in the intergalactic medium. Using toy temperature models and detailed heating histories from cosmological simulations of HeII…
We report on the detection of strongly varying intergalactic HeII absorption in HST/COS spectra of two z~3 quasars. From our homogeneous analysis of the HeII absorption in these and three archival sightlines, we find a marked increase in…
The Lyman-$\alpha$ forest opacity fluctuations observed from high-redshift quasar spectra have been proven to be extremely successful in order to probe the late phase of the reionization epoch. For ideal modeling of these opacity…