Related papers: Cosmic Reionization after Planck: Could Quasars Do…
We present improved synthesis models of the evolving spectrum of the UV/X-ray diffuse background, updating and extending our previous results. A "minimal cosmic reionization model" is presented in which the galaxy UV emissivity traces…
Quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGN) are significant contributors to the metagalactic ionizing background at redshifts z < 3. Recent HST/COS composite spectra of AGN find a harder flux distribution in the Lyman continuum, F_nu ~…
The fraction of ionizing photons which escape their host galaxy and so are able to ionize hydrogen in the inter-galactic medium (IGM) is a critical parameter in studies of the reionization era and early galaxy formation. In this paper we…
Starlight from galaxies plays a pivotal role throughout the process of cosmic reionisation. We present the statistics of dwarf galaxy properties at z > 7 in haloes with masses up to 10^9 solar masses, using a cosmological radiation…
The protagonists of cosmic reionization remain elusive. Faint star-forming galaxies are leading candidates because they are numerous and may have significant ionizing photon escape fractions ($f_{esc}$). Here we update this picture via an…
The large-angle polarization anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) arise from Thomson scattering of CMB photons off free electrons in the post-recombination Universe. In the standard $\Lambda$ cold dark matter cosmological…
There has been great progress in recent years in discovering star forming galaxies at high redshifts (z>5), close to the epoch of reionization of the intergalactic medium (IGM). The WFC3 and ACS cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope have…
Some Lyman continuum photons are likely to escape from most galaxies, and these can play an important role in ionizing gas around and between galaxies, including gas that gives rise to Lyman alpha absorption. Thus the gas surrounding…
The fraction of ionizing photons that escape from young star-forming galaxies is one of the largest uncertainties in determining the role of galaxies in cosmic reionization. Yet traditional techniques for measuring this fraction are…
We investigate self-shielding of intergalactic hydrogen against ionizing radiation in radiative transfer simulations of cosmic reionization carefully calibrated with Lyman alpha forest data. While self-shielded regions manifest as…
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 reionization of the Universe ends the dark ages that started after the recombination era. In the case of H, reionization finishes around $z\sim 6$. Faint star-forming galaxies are the best candidate sources of the H-ionizing radiation,…
Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations have significantly improved over the past several years, and we have already shown that the observed properties of Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs) at z=3 can be explained well by the massive galaxies in the…
We use a set of cosmological simulations combined with radiative transfer calculations to investigate the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the post-reionization Universe. We assess the contributions from the metagalactic ionizing…
Constraints on the ionization structure of the Intergalactic Medium are derived as directly imposed by observations in conjunction with the results of numerical simulations for structure formation. Under the assumption that the population…
In this work, the sixth of a series, we use the ASTRAEUS (semi-numerical rAdiative tranSfer coupling of galaxy formaTion and Reionization in N-body dark matter simUlationS) framework to investigate the nature of the sources that reionized…
We conduct an analysis of the Planck 2015 data that is complete in reionization observables from the large angle polarization $E$-mode spectrum in the redshift range $6 < z < 30$. Based on 5 principal components, all of which are…
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…
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…
We use new studies of the cosmic evolution of star-forming galaxies to estimate the production rate of ionizing photons from hot, massive stars at low and intermediate redshifts. The luminosity function of blue galaxies in the Canada-France…