Related papers: The Dark Ages of the Universe and Hydrogen Reioniz…
The Universe's dark ages end with the formation of the first generation of galaxies. These objects start emitting ultraviolet radiation that carves out ionized regions around them. After a sufficient number of ionizing sources have formed,…
The first light from stars and quasars ended the ``dark ages'' of the universe and led to the reionization of hydrogen by redshift 7. Current observations are at the threshold of probing this epoch. The study of high-redshift sources is…
The Dark Age is the period between the time when the cosmic microwave background was emitted and the time when the evolution of structure in the universe led to the gravitational collapse of objects in which the first stars were formed. The…
The earliest generation of stars, far from being a mere novelty, transformed the universe from darkness to light. The first atoms to form after the Big Bang filled the universe with atomic hydrogen and a few light elements. As gravity…
In popular cold dark matter cosmological scenarios, stars may have first appeared in significant numbers around a redshift of 10 or so, as the gas within protogalactic halos with virial temperatures in excess of 20,000 K (corresponding to…
In cosmological models favored by current observations, the first astrophysical objects formed in dark matter halos at redshifts starting at z>20, and their properties were determined by primordial H_2 molecular chemistry. These…
The formation of the first stars and quasars marks the transformation of the universe from its smooth initial state to its clumpy current state. In popular cosmological models, the first sources of light began to form at redshift 30 and…
Reionization represents an important phase in the history of our Universe when ultraviolet radiation from the first luminous sources, primarily stars and accreting black holes, ionized the neutral hydrogen atoms in the intergalactic medium…
The cosmic microwave background provides an image of the Universe 0.4 million years after the big bang, when atomic hydrogen formed out of free electrons and protons. One of the primary goals of observational cosmology is to obtain…
The universe goes through several phase transitions during its formative stages. Cosmic reionization is the last of them, where ultraviolet and X-ray radiation escape from the first generations of galaxies heating and ionizing their…
One of the next decade's most exciting prospects is to explore the cosmic "dark ages," during which the first stars in the Universe formed, with the 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen. At z>6, this light redshifts into the low-frequency radio…
The universe would have been completely dark between the epoch of recombination and the development of the first non-linear structure. But at redshifts beyond 5 -- perhaps even beyond 20 -- stars formed within `subgalaxies' and created the…
The development of primordial inhomogeneities into the non-linear regime and the formation of the first bound objects mark the transition from a simple cooling universe -- described by just a few parameters -- to a very messy hot one -- the…
The dark age of the universe, when no luminous object had existed, ended with the birth of the first stars, galaxies, and blackholes. This epoch is called cosmic dawn. Cosmic reionization is the major transition of the intergalactic medium…
Star forming galaxies represent a valuable tracer of cosmic history. Recent observational progress with Hubble Space Telescope has led to the discovery and study of the earliest-known galaxies corresponding to a period when the Universe was…
The Cosmic Dark Ages mark a pivotal era of the universe's evolution, transitioning from a neutral, opaque medium to the emergence of the first stars and galaxies that initiated cosmic reionization. This study examines the thermodynamics of…
In this introductory chapter, we outline expectations for when and how the hydrogen and helium atoms in the universe turned from neutral to ionized, focusing on the earliest, least well understood stages, and emphasizing the most important…
The first dwarf galaxies, which constitute the building blocks of the collapsed objects we find today in the Universe, had formed hundreds of millions of years after the big bang. This pedagogical review describes the early growth of their…
The formation of the first stars and quasars marks the transition between the smooth initial state and the clumpy current state of the Universe. In popular CDM cosmologies, the first sources of light started to form at a redshift z=30 and…
Probing the growth of structure from the epoch of hydrogen recombination to the formation of the first stars and galaxies is one of the most important uncharted areas of observational cosmology. Far-IR spectroscopy covering $\lambda$…