Related papers: Cosmic reionization by primordial cosmic rays
About half a million years after the Big Bang, the ever-fading cosmic blackbody radiation cooled below 3000 K and shifted first into the infrared and then into the radio, and the smooth baryonic plasma that filled the Universe became…
The main signature of the interaction between cosmic rays and molecular clouds is the high ionisation degree. This decreases towards the densest parts of a cloud, where star formation is expected, because of energy losses and magnetic…
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…
In this paper I will discuss the possibility of a reionization of the Universe due to the photons emitted by evaporating primordial black holes (PBHs); this process should happen during the last stages of the PBHs life, when the particle…
Motivated by the recent detection by WMAP of a large optical depth to Thomson scattering -- implying a very early reionization epoch -- we assess a scenario where the universe was reionized by `miniquasars' powered by intermediate-mass…
Evidence repeatedly suggests that cosmological sheets, filaments and voids may be substantially magnetised today. The origin of magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium is however currently uncertain. We discuss a magnetogenesis…
We assess the ionising effect of low energy protostellar cosmic rays in protoplanetary disks around a young solar mass star for a wide range of disk parameters. We assume a source of low energy cosmic rays located close to the young star…
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…
The presence of ultra-high energy cosmic rays in the universe in the pre-ionization epoch enhances significantly H$_2$ kinetics in virialized halos. It results in more efficient radiative cooling and decreases the lower mass limit of the…
We investigate the possible effects of reionization by active sources on the cosmic microwave background. We concentrate on the sources themselves as the origin of reionization, rather than early object formation, introducing an extra…
Early photoionization of the intergalactic medium is discussed in a nearly model-independent way, in order to investigate whether early structures corresponding to rare Gaussian peaks in a CDM model can photoionize the intergalactic medium…
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…
We explore the ways in which primordial magnetic fields influence the thermal and ionization history of the post-recombination universe. After recombination the universe becomes mostly neutral resulting also in a sharp drop in the radiative…
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 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…
Current research indicates that the radiation of the first stars alone would not have been suficient to ionize the intergalactic medium on long distances because of the high columnar density of the clouds in which they formed. It becomes…
We propose use of the thickness of the ionisation front as a discriminant between alternative modes of reionisation in the early universe, by stars or by miniquasars. Assuming a photoionisation-recombination balance, we find that for…
The cosmological background of ionizing radiation has been dominated by quasars once the Universe aged by ~2 billion years. At earlier times (redshifts z>3), the observed abundance of bright quasars declined sharply, implying that cosmic…
Large-scale polarization of the cosmic microwave background measured by the WMAP satellite requires a mean optical depth to Thomson scattering, tau_e ~ 0.17. The reionization of the universe must therefore have begun at relatively high…
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…