Related papers: Physics of Cosmic Reionization
Gamma-Ray Bursts represent unique tools to study the early phases of cosmic evolution, the formation of the first stars and galaxies. Absorption line spectra of these sources located in the Epoch of Reionization might provide us with key…
The field of condensed matter physics had its genesis this century and it has had a remarkable evolution. A closer look at its growth reveals a hidden aim in the collective consciousness of the field - a part of the development this century…
The reionization of cosmic hydrogen marks a critical juncture in the history of structure formation in the universe. Here we present a new formulation of the standard reionization equation for the evolution of the volume-averaged HII…
Recent years have seen tremendous progress in our understanding of the cosmos, which in turn points to even deeper questions to be further addressed. Concurrently the laser technology has undergone dramatic revolutions, providing exciting…
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 infrared background records much of the radiant energy released by processes of structure formation that have occurred since the decoupling of matter and radiation following the Big Bang. In the past few years, data from the…
The cosmological background of ionizing radiation has been dominated by quasars once the Universe aged by ~2 billion years. At earlier times (redshifts z>3), the observed abundance of bright quasars declined sharply, implying that cosmic…
In the light of the recent Planck downward revision of the electron scattering optical depth, and of the discovery of a faint AGN population at $z > 4$, we reassess the actual contribution of quasars to cosmic reionization. To this aim, we…
The DASI discovery of CMB polarization, confirmed by WMAP, has opened a new chapter in cosmology. Most of the useful information about inflationary gravitational waves and reionization is on large angular scales where Galactic foreground…
We revisit the classical view that quasar contribution to the reionization of hydrogen is unimportant. When secondary ionization are taken into account, in many plausible scenarios for the formation and growth of supermassive black holes…
Nearly 50 years ago, the first radio signals from cosmic ray air showers were detected. After many successful studies, however, research ceased not even 10 years later. Only a decade ago, the field was revived with the application of…
The study of cosmic phase transitions are of central interest in modern cosmology. In the standard model of cosmology the Universe begins in a very hot state, right after at the end of inflation via the process of reheating/preheating, and…
With improving telescopes, it may now be possible to observe the Epoch of Reionization in multiple ways. We examine two of these observables - the excess light in the near-infrared background that may be due to high redshift stars and…
Motivated by the WMAP results indicating an early epoch of reionization, we consider alternative cosmic star formation models which are capable of reionizing the early intergalactic medium. We develop models which include an early burst of…
When modelling the ionisation of gas in the intergalactic medium after reionisation, it is standard practice to assume a uniform radiation background. This assumption is not always appropriate; models with radiative transfer show that…
Over the past decades, advancements in observational cosmology have introduced us in an era of precision cosmology, dramatically enhancing our understanding of the Universe's history as well as bringing new tensions to light. Observations…
Feedback effects due to massive stars and supernovae in the first objects are shown to strongly regulate both galaxy formation/evolution and the reionization process. Here we review the most important ones in some detail. We discuss how…
We review some of the recent progress in our knowledge about high-energy cosmic rays, with an emphasis on the interpretation of the different observational results. We discuss the effects that are relevant to shape the cosmic ray spectrum…
We combine observational data on a dozen independent cosmic properties at high-$z$ with the information on reionization drawn from the spectra of distant luminous sources and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to constrain the…
The physical ingredients to describe the epoch of cosmological recombination are amazingly simple and well-understood. This fact allows us to take into account a very large variety of processes, still finding potentially measurable…