Related papers: Constraints on QSO emissivity using H I and He II …
Recent measurements of Si IV/C IV ratios in the high-redshift Ly-alpha forest (Songaila & Cowie, AJ, 112, 335 [1996a]; Savaglio et al., A&A, in press [1997]) have opened a new window on chemical enrichment and the first generations of…
The reionization epoch of singly ionized helium (He II) is believed to start at redshifts z~3.5--4 and be nearly complete by z~2.7. We explore the post-reionization epoch with far-ultraviolet spectra of the bright, high-redshift quasar…
The power spectra of the redshifted 21-cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) contain information about the ionization and thermal states of the intergalactic medium (IGM), and depend on the properties of the EoR sources. Recently,…
Recently, NIRSpec PRISM/CLEAR observations by JWST have begun providing rest-frame UV continuum measurements of galaxies at $z\gtrsim7$, revealing signatures of Ly$\alpha$ damping-wing (DW) absorption by the intergalactic medium (IGM). We…
Three independent observational studies have now detected a narrow (\Delta z ~ 0.5) dip centred at z=3.2 in the otherwise smooth redshift evolution of the Lya forest effective optical depth. This feature has previously been interpreted as…
We present a quantitative model of Lyman-alpha (Ly-alpha) emission throughout cosmic history and determine the prospects for intensity mapping of spatial fluctuations in the Ly-alpha signal. Since i) our model assumes at z>6 the minimum…
We simulate the Lya forest in a standard CDM universe using a 2-level hierarchical grid code to evolve the dark and baryonic matter components self-consistently. We solve the time-dependent ionization equations for hydrogen and helium,…
We use a semi-analytical approach to simulate absorption spectra of QSOs at high redshifts with the aim of constraining the cosmic reionization history. We consider two physically motivated and detailed reionization histories: (i) an Early…
We present new constraints on the 21cm Epoch of Reionization (EoR) power spectrum derived from 3 months of observing with a 32-antenna, dual-polarization deployment of the Donald C. Backer Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of…
We use a semi-analytic model of Lyman alpha emitters (LAEs) to constrain the reionization history. By considering two physically motivated scenarios in which reionization ends either early (ERM, z_i ~ 7) or late (LRM, z_i ~ 6), we fix the…
We present observations of a population of Lya emitters (LAEs) exhibiting fluorescent emission via the reprocessing of ionizing radiation from nearby hyperluminous QSOs. These LAEs are part of a survey at redshifts 2.5 < z < 2.9 combining…
The effective optical depth in the Ly-alpha forest region of 1061 low-resolution QSO spectra drawn from the SDSS database decreases with decreasing redshift over the range 2.5 < z < 4. Although the evolution is relatively smooth, tau_eff ~…
The reionization of the second electron of helium shapes the physical state of intergalactic gas at redshifts between 2 < z < 5. Because performing full in situ radiative transfer in hydrodynamic simulations is computationally expensive for…
We explore the impact of spatial fluctuations in the intergalactic medium temperature on the Lyman-alpha forest flux power spectrum near z ~ 3. We develop a semianalytic model to examine temperature fluctuations resulting from inhomogeneous…
We investigate the 21-cm signature that may arise from the intergalactic medium (IGM) prior to the epoch of full reionization (z>5). In scenarios in which the IGM is reionized by discrete sources of photoionizing radiation, the neutral gas…
We present a study of the cosmological Ly$\alpha$ emission signal at $z > 4$. Our goal is to predict the power spectrum of the spatial fluctuations that could be observed by an intensity mapping survey. The model uses the latest data from…
We obtained near-infrared spectroscopy of the z=5.74 QSO, SDSSp J104433.04-012 502.2 with the Infrared Camera and Spectrograph of the Subaru telescope. The redshift of 5.74 corresponds to a cosmological age of 1.0 Gyr for the current…
We investigate the implications of the intergalactic opacity for the evolution of the cosmic UV luminosity density and its sources. Our main constraint is our measurement of the Lya forest opacity at redshifts 2<z<4.2 from 86…
Recent years have brought more precise temperature measurements of the low-density intergalactic medium (IGM). These new measurements constrain the processes that heated the IGM, such as the reionization of H I and of He II. We present a…
The recent discovery by Cowie \etal and Tytler \etal of metals in the \Lya clouds shows that the intergalactic medium (IGM) at high redshift is contaminated by the products of stars, and suggests that ionizing photons from massive star…