Related papers: Cosmic Reionization Redux
We calculate the intergalactic photon density as a function of both energy and redshift for 0 < z < 6 for photon energies from .003 eV to the Lyman limit cutoff at 13.6 eV in a Lambda-CDM universe with $\Omega_{\Lambda} = 0.7$ and…
In the Simulations and Constructions of the Reionization of Cosmic Hydrogen (SCORCH) project, we present new radiation-hydrodynamic simulations with updated high-redshift galaxy populations and varying radiation escape fractions. The…
The reionization of hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) is a crucial landmark in the history of the universe, but the processes through which it occurs remain mysterious. In particular, recent numerical and analytic work suggest that…
The Ly$\alpha$ luminosity function (LF) of Ly$\alpha$ emitters (LAEs) has been used to constrain the neutral hydrogen fraction in the intergalactic medium (IGM) and thus the timeline of cosmic reionization. Here we present the results of a…
We investigate the intrinsic opacity of high-redshift galaxies to outgoing ionising photons using high-quality photometry of a sample of 27 spectroscopically-identified galaxies of redshift 1.9<z<3.5 in the Hubble Deep Field. Our…
We present improved synthesis models of the evolving spectrum of the UV/X-ray diffuse background, updating and extending our previous results. A "minimal cosmic reionization model" is presented in which the galaxy UV emissivity traces…
Lyman Limit systems (LLSs) trace the low-density circumgalactic medium and the most dense regions of the intergalactic medium, so their number density and evolution at high redshift, just after reionisation, are important to constrain. We…
Estimates of the metagalactic hydrogen ionization rate from the Lyman-alpha forest opacity in QSO absorption spectra depend on the complex density distribution of neutral hydrogen along the line-of-sight. We use a large suite of high…
We use hydrodynamic cosmological simulations in a 9.6 Mpc box to explore the evolution of the intergalactic medium (IGM) transmissivity from z=2 through the epoch of reionization. Reionization is achieved through an ultraviolet background…
We study the reionization parameter space consistent with the current measurement of the Thomson optical depth using a new parametrization of the reionization history. The mass-weighted ionization fraction is specified in terms of the…
We use a semi-analytical approach to simulate absorption spectra of QSOs at high redshifts with the aim of constraining the cosmic reionization history. We consider two physically motivated and detailed reionization histories: (i) an Early…
We investigate constraints on cosmic reionization extracted from the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. We combine the Planck CMB anisotropy data in temperature with the low-multipole polarization data to fit LCDM models with…
We discuss constraints on cosmic reionisation and their implications on a cosmic SFR density $\rho_\mathrm{SFR}$ model; we study the influence of key-parameters such as the clumping factor of ionised hydrogen in the intergalactic medium…
Cosmic Microwave Background temperature and polarization anisotropies from Planck have estimated a lower value of the optical depth to reionization ($\tau$) compared to WMAP. A significant period in the reionization history would then fall…
Observations on the high-redshift galaxies at $z>6$ imply that their ionizing emissivity is unable to fully reionize the Universe at $z\sim 6$. Either a high escape fraction of ionizing photons from these galaxies or a large population of…
Recent observations suggest that helium became fully ionized around redshift z ~ 3. The HeII optical depth derived from the Lyman-alpha forest decreases substantially from this period to z ~ 2; moreover, it fluctuates strongly near z ~ 3…
We interpret observations of intergalactic low ionisation metal absorption systems at redshifts z $\gtrsim$5 in terms of pressure-confined clouds. We find clouds confined by the expected pressure of galactic haloes with masses $11<\log…
Constraints on the ionization structure of the Intergalactic Medium are derived as directly imposed by observations in conjunction with the results of numerical simulations for structure formation. Under the assumption that the population…
We use a suite of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations including a self-consistent treatment for inhomogeneous reionisation to study the impact of galactic outflows and photoionisation heating on the volume-averaged recombination rate of…
This paper focuses on cosmological constraints derived from analysis of WMAP data alone. A simple LCDM cosmological model fits the five-year WMAP temperature and polarization data. The basic parameters of the model are consistent with the…