Related papers: Cosmic reionization by primordial cosmic rays
Galaxies had their most significant impact on the Universe when they assembled their first generations of stars. Energetic photons emitted by young, massive stars in primeval galaxies ionized the intergalactic medium surrounding their host…
Dark matter annihilation or decay could have a significant impact on the ionisation and thermal history of the universe. In this paper, we study the potential contribution of dark matter annihilation (s-wave- or p-wave-dominated) or decay…
The epoch of reionization probes the state of our universe when the very first stars formed and ionized the hydrogen atoms in the surrounding medium. Since the epoch has not yet been probed observationally, it is often called the "final…
(Abridged) Cosmic rays (CRs) are thought to provide an important source of ionization in the outermost and densest regions of protoplanetary disks; however, it is unknown to what degree they are physically present. As is observed in the…
Low energy cosmic rays (up to the GeV energy domain) play a crucial role in the physics and chemistry of the densest phase of the interstellar medium. Unlike interstellar ionising radiation, they can penetrate large column densities of gas,…
In the light of the recent Planck downward revision of the electron scattering optical depth, and of the discovery of a faint AGN population at $z > 4$, we reassess the actual contribution of quasars to cosmic reionization. To this aim, we…
We calculate the reionization history for different models of the stellar population and explore the effects of primordial magnetic fields, dark matter decay and dark matter annihilation on reionization. We find that stellar populations…
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…
We calculate the contribution to the cosmic infrared background from very massive metal-free stars at high redshift. We explore two plausible star-formation models and two limiting cases for the reprocessing of the ionizing stellar…
Increasing evidence suggests that cosmological sheets, filaments, and voids may be substantially magnetized today. The origin of magnetic fields in the intergalactic medium (IGM) is, however, currently uncertain. It seems well known that…
The epoch of reionization (6 < z < 10) marks the period in our universe when the first large galaxies grew to fruition, and began to affect the universe around them. Massive stars, and potentially accreting supermassive black holes, filled…
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…
Early in the reionization process, the intergalactic medium (IGM) would have been quite inhomogeneous on small scales, due to the low Jeans mass in the neutral IGM and the hierarchical growth of structure in a cold dark matter Universe.…
Cosmic rays are usually assumed to be the main ionization agent for the interior of molecular clouds where UV and X-ray photons cannot penetrate. Here we test this hypothesis by limiting ourselves to the case of diffuse clouds and assuming…
We discuss the photoionization of the intergalactic medium by early formed quasars and propose a mechanism which could generate measurable temperature fluctuations $\delta_{T }~=~\Delta T/T$ of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Early…
Cosmic rays may be linked to the formation of volatiles necessary for prebiotic chemistry. We explore the effect of cosmic rays in a hydrogen-dominated atmosphere, as a proof-of-concept that ion-neutral chemistry may be important for…
In this paper, we address which sources contributed most of the reionizing photons. Our argument assumes that the reionization ended around z ~ 6 and that it was a relatively quick process, i.e., that there was a non-negligible fraction of…
The transition between the nearly smooth initial state of the Universe and its clumpy state today occurred during the epoch when the first stars and low-luminosity quasars formed. For Cold Dark Matter cosmologies, the radiation produced by…
Galactic cosmic rays and solar protons ionize the present terrestrial atmosphere, and the air showers are simulated by well-tested Monte-Carlo simulations, such as PHITS code. We use the latest version of PHITS to evaluate the possible…
Observational data on the early galactic abundances of the light elements lithium, beryllium and boron are combined with data related to the reionization of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in a search of processes happening in the early…