Related papers: The Epoch of Reionization
The WMAP satellite has measured a large optical depth to electron scattering after cosmological recombination of 0.17+-0.04, implying significant reionization of the primordial gas only ~200 million years after the big bang. However, the…
During the period of reionization the Universe was filled with a cosmological background of ionizing radiation. By that time a significant fraction of the cosmic gas had already been incorporated into collapsed galactic halos with virial…
We revisit the possibility of constraining the properties of dark matter (DM) by studying the epoch of cosmic reionization. Previous studies have shown that DM annihilation was unlikely to have provided a large fraction of the photons that…
Early galaxies were the radiation source for reionization, with the photoheating feedback from the reionization process expected to reduce the efficiency of star formation in low mass haloes. Hence, to fully understand reionization and…
Cosmic reionization holds the key to understand structure formation in the Universe, and can inform us about the properties of the first sources, as their star formation efficiency and escape fraction of ionizing photons. By combining the…
The elegance of inflationary cosmology and cosmological perturbation theory ends with the formation of the first stars and galaxies, the initial sources of light that launched the phenomenologically rich process of cosmic reionization. Here…
Observations of the 21-centimetre line of atomic hydrogen in the early Universe directly probe the history of the reionization of the gas between galaxies. The observations are challenging, though, because of the low expected signal…
Feedback effects due to massive stars and supernovae in the first objects are shown to strongly regulate both galaxy formation/evolution and the reionization process. Here we review the most important ones in some detail. We discuss how…
The 21-cm signal from the cosmic reionization epoch can shed light on the history of heating of the primordial intergalactic medium (IGM) at z~30-10. It has been suggested that X-rays from the first accreting black holes could significantly…
We discuss new constraints on the epoch of cosmic reionization and test the assumption that most of the ionizing photons responsible arose from high redshift star-forming galaxies. Good progress has been made in charting the end of…
The quantum evaporation of primordial black holes may have a relevant effect on the reionization of the Universe at small redshifts ($z \leq 60$): in this paper, I studied the possibility of a reionization induced by the photons emitted…
The emergence of the first black holes during the first billion years of cosmic history marks a key event in cosmology. Their formation is part of the overall process of ending the cosmic dark ages, when the first stars appeared in low-mass…
Observing the first galaxies formed during the reionisation epoch, i.e. approximately within the first billion years after the Big Bang, remains one of the challenges of contemporary astrophysics. Several efforts are being undertaken to…
Magnetic fields are ubiquitous in the Universe. They seem to be present at virtually all scales and all epochs. Yet, whether the fields on cosmological scales are of astrophysical or cosmological origin remains an open major problem. Here…
We compare the available catalogs of $z\approx6$ galaxies in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (UDF) and in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) with the expected properties of the sources of cosmological reionization from our…
The formation of the first generations of stars at redshifts z > 15-20 signaled the transition from the simple initial state of the universe to one of increasing complexity. We here review recent progress in understanding the assembly…
(Abridged) Cosmology faces three distinct challenges in the next decade. (1) The dark sector, both dark matter and dark energy, dominates the Universe. Key questions include determining the nature of both. Improved observational probes are…
Star-forming dwarf galaxies in the local Universe, especially extremely metal-poor ones, can be considered analogous to early galaxies of the Epoch of Reionization (z >= 6). Currently available telescopes cannot adequately detect and…
The epoch of reionization (EoR) sets a fundamental benchmark in cosmic structure formation, corresponding to the formation of the first luminous objects that act to ionize the neutral intergalactic medium (IGM). Recent observations at…
Until now, investigating the early stages of galaxy formation has been primarily the realm of theoretical modeling and computer simulations, which require many physical ingredients and are challenging to test observationally. However, the…