Related papers: Quasar Str\"omgren Spheres Before Cosmological Rei…
Further investigation of data on quasars, especially in the ultraviolet band, yields an amazingly coherent narrative which we present in this paper. Quasars are characterised by strong continuum emission and redshifted emission and…
The Ly$\alpha$ emission line is one of the most promising probes of cosmic reionisation but isolating the signature of a change in the ionisation state of the IGM is challenging because of intrinsic evolution and internal radiation transfer…
We introduce a new approach for analyzing the IGM damping wings imprinted on the proximity zones of quasars in the epoch of reionization (EoR). Whereas past work has typically forgone the additional constraining power afforded by the blue…
In the context of the FLASHLIGHT survey, we obtained deep narrow band images of 15 $z\sim2$ quasars with GMOS on Gemini-South in an effort to measure Ly$\alpha$ emission from circum- and inter-galactic gas on scales of hundreds of kpc from…
The hardness of the ionizing continuum from the first sources of UV radiation plays a crucial role in the reionization of the intergalactic medium (IGM). While usual stellar populations have soft spectra, mini-quasars or metal-free stars…
We present an analysis of the Lyman alpha forests of five quasar spectra in the near UV. Properties of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at an intermediate redshift interval (0.9 < z < 1.9) are studied. The amount of baryons in the diffuse…
Lyman-$\alpha$ spheres, i.e. regions around the first stars which are illuminated by Lyman-$\alpha$ photons and show 21cm absorption feature against the CMB, are smoking guns at the dawn of the reionization epoch. Though overwhelming radio…
We have obtained a moderate resolution spectrum of the quasar PKS 0528-250 with the Red Channel Spectrograph on the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) in order to study a damped Lyman alpha absorption line system at z = 2.8115. We obtain a new…
Recent observations of high redshift quasars at z~6 have finally revealed complete Gunn-Peterson absorption. However, this at best constrains the volume-weighted and mass-weighted hydrogen neutral fractions to be greater than 10^-3 and…
The next generation of telescopes aim to directly observe the first generation of galaxies that initiated the reionization process in our Universe. The Lyman Alpha (Lya) emission line is robustly predicted to be the most prominent intrinsic…
The intense radiation emitted by luminous quasars dramatically alters the ionization state of their surrounding IGM. This so-called proximity effect extends out to tens of Mpc, and manifests as large coherent regions of enhanced…
We demonstrate a new technique for determining the physical conditions of the broad line emitting gas in quasars, using near-infrared hydrogen emission lines. Unlike higher ionisation species, hydrogen is an efficient line emitter for a…
We present a Bayesian inference on the neutral hydrogen fraction of the intergalactic medium (IGM), $x_{\textrm{HI}}$, at $z \sim$ 6-8 using the properties of Lyman break galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization. We use large samples of…
We calculate the absolute intensity and anisotropies of the Lyman-alpha radiation field present during the epoch of reionization. We consider emission from both galaxies and the intergalactic medium (IGM) and take into account the main…
An appealing approach for studying the reionization history of the Universe is to measure the redshift evolution of the Lyman-alpha fraction, the percentage of Lyman-break selected galaxies that emit appreciably in the Ly-alpha line. This…
We examine a large set of synthetic quasar spectra to realistically assess the potential of using the relative sizes of highly ionized near-zones in the Lya and Lyb forest as a probe of the neutral hydrogen content of the intergalactic…
We use Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) to perform long-slit spectroscopic observations of 23 newly discovered radio-loud quasars (RLQs) at $2.7<z<3.3$. The sample consists of powerful AGN brighter than 200 mJy at 1.4 GHz and is…
Infrared and nebular lines provide some of our best probes of the physics regulating the properties of the interstellar medium (ISM) at high-redshift. However, interpreting the physical conditions of high-redshift galaxies directly from…
The next generation of telescopes aim to directly observe the first generation of galaxies that initiated the reionization process in our Universe. The Lyman Alpha (Lya) emission line is robustly predicted to be the most prominent intrinsic…
Understanding the growth of the supermassive black holes powering luminous quasars, their co-evolution with host galaxies, and impact on the surrounding intergalactic medium depends sensitively on the duration of quasar accretion episodes.…