Related papers: Updating reionization scenarios after recent data
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…
We use the Aurora radiation-hydrodynamical simulations to study the mean free path (MFP) for hydrogen ionizing photons during the epoch of reionization. We directly measure the MFP by averaging the distance 1 Ry photons travel before…
The intergalactic medium was reionized before redshift z~6, most likely by starlight which escaped from early galaxies. The very first stars formed when hydrogen molecules (H2) cooled gas inside the smallest galaxies, minihalos of mass…
The recent measurement by WMAP of a large electron scattering optical depth tau_e = 0.17 +- 0.04 is consistent with a simple model of reionization in which the intergalactic medium (IGM) is ionized at redshift z ~ 15, and remains highly…
The recent low value of Planck (2016) integrated optical depth to Thomson scattering suggests that the reionization occurred fairly suddenly, disfavoring extended reionization scenarios. This will have a significant impact on the 21cm power…
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…
By means of carefully calibrated semi-analytical reionization models, we estimate the minimum mass of star-forming haloes required to match the current data. Models which do not include haloes of total mass M < 10^9 M_sun fail at…
We determine the abundance of i'-band drop-outs in the HST/ACS GOODS surveys and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF). The majority of these sources are likely to be z~6 galaxies whose flux decrement arises from Lyman-alpha absorption. We have…
While the average metallicity of the intergalactic medium rises above Z~10^{-3} Zsun by the end of the reionization, pockets of metal-free gas can still exist at later times. We quantify the presence of a long tail in the formation rate of…
The reionization epoch concludes when ionizing photons reach every corner of the Universe. Reionization has generally been assumed to be limited primarily by the rate at which galaxies produce ionizing photons, but the recent measurement of…
Recently, we have presented the first large-scale radiative transfer simulations of reionization. Here we present new simulations which extend the source halo mass range downward to 10^8M_solar, to capture the full range of halo masses…
We study the reionization history of the Universe in cosmological models with non-Gaussian density fluctuations, taking them to have a renormalized $\chi^2$ probability distribution function parametrized by the number of degrees of freedom,…
The measured properties of the epoch of reionization (EoR) show that reionization probably began around z ~ 12-15 and ended by z=6. In addition, a careful analysis of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background indicate a scattering…
The electron scattering optical depth constraints on reionization suggest that there may be other sources that contribute to the ionization of hydrogen aside from observable star forming galaxies. Often the calculated value of the electron…
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…
The combination of the $z=0-13.5$ cosmic star formation history and active galactic nuclei (AGN) luminosity history as inferred by the James Webb Space Telescope is connected to the cosmic spectral energy distribution (CSED) to explore the…
The temporal evolution of the ionizing UV background radiation field at high redshift provides a probe of the evolution of the early star formation rate. By comparing the observed levels of absorption in the highest redshift quasar spectra…
We use a large set of hydrodynamical simulations, combined with measurements of the Lyman alpha opacity of the IGM taken from the literature, to obtain robust estimates for the photoionization rate per hydrogen atom at z=5 and 6. We find…
Today's galaxies experienced cosmic reionization at different times in different locations. For the first time, reionization ($50\%$ ionized) redshifts, $z_R$, at the location of their progenitors are derived from new, fully-coupled…
The presence of excess scatter in the Ly-$\alpha$ forest at $z\sim 5.5$, together with the existence of sporadic extended opaque Gunn-Peterson troughs, has started to provide robust evidence for a late end of hydrogen reionisation. However,…