Related papers: Intergalactic heating by Lyman-alpha photons inclu…
Prior to the epoch of full reionization, the intergalactic medium and gravitationally collapsed systems will be detectable in 21-cm radiation. Physical mechanisms that would produce a 21-cm signature are discussed. These include Lya…
We derive new constraints on models of decaying and annihilating dark matter (DM) by requiring that the energy injected into the intergalactic medium (IGM) not overheat it at late times, when measurements of the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest…
We present a new investigation of the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) during and after reionization using the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest flux power spectrum at $4.0\lesssim z\lesssim5.2$. Using a sample of 15 high-resolution…
X-ray photons can penetrate deep into the intergalactic medium (IGM), leading to preheating of the IGM prior to cosmic reionization. X-ray preheating wipes out some of the small-scale structures that would otherwise be present prior to the…
The density and temperature properties of the intergalactic medium (IGM) reflect the heating and ionization history during cosmological structure formation, and are primarily probed by the Lyman-alpha forest of neutral hydrogen absorption…
The temperature of the low-density intergalactic medium is set by the balance between adiabatic cooling resulting from the expansion of the universe, and photo-heating by the UV-background. A sudden injection of entropy from the…
Winds from pregalactic starbursts and 'miniquasars' may pollute the IGM with metals and raise its temperature to a high adiabat, and so inhibit the formation of early galaxies. We compute the thermal history of the IGM when it experiences a…
The sources which reionized the Intergalactic Medium by redshift ~6 are still unknown. A severe constraint on the ionization process is the low emissivity required to maintain the ionization in the Lyman-{\alpha} forest.…
The conditions within the ionization front of a quasar during reionization (T ~ 30,000 K, neutral hydrogen fraction ~ 0.5) are ideal for producing Lyman-alpha emission via collisional excitation of hydrogen atoms. Observations of this…
The light of the first astrophysical objects is expected to leave an imprint on the global 21-cm signal as it heats, excites, and ionizes neutral hydrogen. This dependence on early astrophysics introduces significant uncertainties in…
We estimate the global signal in the redshifted hyperfine structure line 21 cm of hydrogen atoms formed during the Dark Ages and Cosmic Dawn epochs. The evolution of the brightness temperature in this line was computed to study its…
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…
Understanding the sources responsible for reionizing the Universe is a key goal of observational cosmology. A discrepancy has existed between the metagalactic hydrogen ionization rate, Gamma_HI, predicted by early hydrodynamical simulations…
The redshifted 21-cm emission by neutral hydrogen offers a unique tool for mapping structure formation in the early universe in three dimensions. Here we provide the first detailed calculation of the 21-cm emission signal during and after…
The H atoms inside minihalos (i.e. halos with virial temperatures T_vir < 10^4 K, in the mass range roughly from 10^4 M_sun to 10^8 M_sun) during the cosmic dark ages in a LambdaCDM universe produce a redshifted background of…
In this paper we have calculated the effect of Lyalpha photons emitted by the first stars on the evolution of the IGM temperature. We have considered both a standard Salpeter IMF and a delta-function IMF for very massive stars with mass 300…
A definite prediction from recent N-body/hydro simulations of the structure formation of the universe is the presence of a diffuse intergalactic medium (IGM) in a temperature range of 10^5 - 10^7 K. This hot phase of the IGM may account for…
We consider the evolution of the sky-averaged 21 cm background during the early phases of structure formation. Using simple analytic models, we calculate the thermal and ionization histories, assuming that stellar photons dominate the…
We present a detailed calculation of the propagation of AGN-like ionizing radiation through the intergalactic space. We model the ionization state of absorbing clouds, and show that the universe will be more opaque above $4\,$Ryd than…
The temperature of the low-density intergalactic medium (IGM) at high redshift is sensitive to the timing and nature of hydrogen and HeII reionization, and can be measured from Lyman-alpha forest absorption spectra. Since the memory of…