Related papers: Reionization and its sources
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…
After the so-called cosmic recombination, the expanding universe entered into a period of darkness since most of the matter was in a neutral state. About a billion years later, however, the intergalactic space was once again ionized. The…
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…
In popular cold dark matter cosmological scenarios, stars may have first appeared in significant numbers around a redshift of 10 or so, as the gas within protogalactic halos with virial temperatures in excess of 20,000 K (corresponding to…
The epoch of reionization, when photons from early galaxies ionized the intergalactic medium about a billion years after the Big Bang, is the last major phase transition in the Universe's history. Measuring the characteristics of the…
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…
In cosmological models favored by current observations, the first astrophysical objects formed in dark matter halos at redshifts starting at z>20, and their properties were determined by primordial H_2 molecular chemistry. These…
The cosmic reionization era, which includes formation of the first stars, galaxies, and AGN, is now one of the most active frontiers of cosmological research. We review briefly our current understanding of the early structure formation, and…
The history of the transition from a neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) to one that is almost fully ionized can reveal the character of cosmological ionizing sources. We study the evolution of the volume filling factor of HII and HeIII…
A model of the density distribution in the intergalactic medium, motivated by that found in numerical simulations, is used to demonstrate the effect of a clumpy IGM and discrete sources on the reionization of the universe. In an…
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…
The earliest generation of stars, far from being a mere novelty, transformed the universe from darkness to light. The first atoms to form after the Big Bang filled the universe with atomic hydrogen and a few light elements. As gravity…
The development of primordial inhomogeneities into the non-linear regime and the formation of the first bound objects mark the transition from a simple cooling universe -- described by just a few parameters -- to a very messy hot one -- the…
Theoretical studies and current observations of the high-redshift intergalactic medium (IGM) indicate that at least two cosmic transitions occur by the time the universe reaches gas metallicities of about $10^{-3}$ of solar values. These…
Observational studies indicate that the intergalactic medium (IGM) is highly ionized up to redshifts just over 6. A number of models have been developed to describe the process of reionization and the effects of the ionizing photons from…
Recent observations have set the first constraints on the epoch of reionization (EoR), corresponding to the formation epoch of the first luminous objects. Studies of Gunn-Peterson (GP) absorption, and related phenomena, suggest a…
In this paper I will discuss the possibility of a reionization of the Universe due to the photons emitted by evaporating primordial black holes (PBHs); this process should happen during the last stages of the PBHs life, when the particle…
A major goal of observational and theoretical cosmology is to observe the largely unexplored time period in the history of our universe when the first galaxies form, and to interpret these measurements. Early galaxies dramatically impacted…
This paper reviews our current understanding of the process of re-ionization of the Universe, focusing especially on those models where re-ionization is caused by UV radiation from massive stars. After reviewing the expected properties of…
The reionization of intergalactic hydrogen has received intense theoretical scrutiny over the past two decades. Here, we approach the process formally as a percolation process and phase transition. Using semi-numeric simulations, we…