Related papers: Reionization after JWST: a photon budget crisis?
The cosmic microwave background provides an image of the Universe 0.4 million years after the big bang, when atomic hydrogen formed out of free electrons and protons. One of the primary goals of observational cosmology is to obtain…
The rest-frame UV emission from massive stars contains a wealth of information about the physical nature and conditions of star formation in galaxies. Using studies of the rest-frame UV, the past decade has witnessed the beginning of…
We explore scenarios for reionizing the intergalactic medium with low galaxy ionizing photon escape fractions. We combine simulation-based halo-mass dependent escape fractions with an extrapolation of the observed galaxy rest-ultraviolet…
Early observations with JWST indicate an over-abundance of bright galaxies at redshifts $z \gtrsim 10$ relative to Hubble-calibrated model predictions. More puzzling still is the apparent lack of evolution in the abundance of such objects…
The fraction of ionizing photons (fesc) that escape from z>6 galaxies is an important parameter when assessing the role of these objects in the reionization of the Universe, but the opacity of the intergalactic medium precludes a direct…
Measuring the ionizing photon production efficiency $\xi_{\mathrm{ion,0}}$ -- the ratio of ionizing photon output rate $Q_{\rm H^0}$ to UV continuum luminosity $L_{\rm UV}$ -- in galaxies at $z > 6$ is crucial for constraining their…
We present a new analysis of the rest-frame UV and optical spectra of a sample of three $z>8$ galaxies discovered behind the gravitational lensing cluster RX\,J2129.4+0009. We combine these observations with $z>7.5$ galaxies from the…
The fraction of ionizing photons that escape their host galaxies and so are able to ionize hydrogen in the inter-galactic medium (IGM) is a critical parameter in analyses of the reionization era and early galaxy formation. Studies of the…
Measurements of the galaxy UV luminosity function at z>6 suggest that young stars hosted in low-mass star-forming galaxies produced the bulk of hydrogen-ionizing photons necessary to reionize the intergalactic medium (IGM) by redshift z~6.…
We compare model results from a semi-analytic (merger-tree based) framework for high-redshift (z ~ 5-20) galaxy formation against reionization indicators, including the Planck electron scattering optical depth and the ionizing photon…
Reionization is an inhomogeneous process, thought to begin in small ionized bubbles of the intergalactic medium (IGM) around overdense regions of galaxies. Recent Lyman-alpha (Ly$\alpha$) studies during the epoch of reionization show…
Known populations of QSOs appear to fall short of producing the ionizing flux required for re-ionizing the universe. The alternative, galaxies as sources of ionizing photons, suffers from the problem that known types of galaxies are almost…
The high-redshift progenitors of present-day galaxy clusters are believed to substantially contribute to the global star-formation rate density and drive the large-scale reionization of the Universe. Here we present a blind and unbiased…
Constraining when and how reionisation began is pivotal for understanding when the first galaxies formed. Lyman-alpha (Ly$\alpha$) emission from galaxies is currently our most promising probe of these early stages. At z>7 the majority of…
Several observational and theoretical arguments suggest that starburst galaxies may rival quasars as sources of metagalactic ionizing radiation at redshifts z > 3. Reionization of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at z > 5 may arise, in part,…
Recent observations of galaxies at $z \gtrsim 7$, along with the low value of the electron scattering optical depth measured by the Planck mission, make galaxies plausible as dominant sources of ionizing photons during the epoch of…
An estimate for the number of ionizing photons per baryon as a function of redshift is computed based on the plausible extrapolation of the observed galaxy UV luminosity function and the latest results on the properties of the escape…
We use high resolution N-body dark matter simulations and L-Galaxies semi-analytical galaxy formation models to explore the high-$z$ galaxy properties and estimate the budget of ionizing photons. The parameters within L-Galaxies are…
Quantifying the physical conditions that allow radiation emitted shortward of the hydrogen ionization edge at 911.7 {\AA} to escape the first collapsed objects and ultimately reionize the universe is a compelling problem for astrophysics.…
The goal of searching back in cosmic time to find star formation during the epoch of reionization will soon be within reach. We assess the detectability of high-redshift galaxies by combining cosmological hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy…