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Related papers: Did Cosmic Rays Reionize the Intergalactic Medium?

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We study the effects of escaping cosmic rays (CRs) on the interstellar medium (ISM) around their source with spherically symmetric CR-hydrodynamical simulations taking into account the evolution of the CR energy spectrum, radiative cooling,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-07 Jiro Shimoda , Katsuaki Asano , Shu-ichiro Inutsuka

With the advent of the first luminous sources at Cosmic Dawn (CD), the redshifted 21-cm signal, from the neutral hydrogen in the Inter-Galactic Medium (IGM), is predicted to undergo a transition from absorption to emission against the CMB.…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2023-07-04 Mohd Kamran , Suman Majumdar , Raghunath Ghara , Garrelt Mellema , Somnath Bharadwaj , Jonathan R. Pritchard , Rajesh Mondal , Ilian T. Iliev

Understanding the sources responsible for reionizing the Universe is a key goal of observational cosmology. A discrepancy has existed between the metagalactic hydrogen ionization rate, Gamma_HI, predicted by early hydrodynamical simulations…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 James S. Bolton , Martin G. Haehnelt , Matteo Viel , Volker Springel

With a simple power-law approximation of high-redshift ($\gtrsim3.5$) star formation history, i.e., $\dot{\rho}_*(z)\propto [(1+z)/4.5]^{-\alpha}$, we investigate the reionization of intergalactic medium (IGM) and the consequent Thomson…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2012-08-07 Yun-Wei Yu , K. S. Cheng , M. C. Chu , S. Yeung

The Universe is opaque to extragalactic very high-energy gamma rays (VHEGRs, E>100 GeV) because they annihilate and pair produce on the extragalactic background light. The resulting ultra-relativistic pairs are assumed to lose energy…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-28 Philip Chang , Avery E. Broderick , Christoph Pfrommer

The thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) after reionization is to a large extent determined by photoheating. Here we demonstrate that calculations of the photoheating rate which neglect radiative transfer effects substantially…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-26 Tom Abel , Martin G. Haehnelt

We use hydrodynamical simulations of two Milky Way-mass galaxies to demonstrate the impact of cosmic-ray pressure on the kinematics of cool and warm circumgalactic gas. Consistent with previous studies, we find that cosmic-ray pressure can…

Cosmic rays may have contributed to the start of life on Earth. Here, we investigate the evolution of the Galactic cosmic ray spectrum at Earth from ages $t = 0.6-6.0\,$Gyr. We use a 1D cosmic ray transport model and a 1.5D stellar wind…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2020-10-28 D. Rodgers-Lee , A. A. Vidotto , A. M. Taylor , P. B. Rimmer , T. P. Downes

Ionization balance in the intergalactic medium (IGM) is central to the interpretation of quasar absorption spectra, linking observed ionic columns to the underlying gas density, temperature, metallicity, and ionizing radiation field.…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-17 Bhaskar Arya , Kartick C. Sarkar , Shiv K. Sethi

The annihilation or decay of Dark Matter (DM) particles could affect the thermal history of the universe and leave an observable signature in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies. We update constraints on the annihilation rate of…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-11 Gaelle Giesen , Julien Lesgourgues , Benjamin Audren , Yacine Ali-Haïmoud

The intergalactic medium (IGM) underwent intense heating that resulted in pressure disequilibrium in the wake of ionization fronts during cosmic reionization. The dynamical relaxation to restore pressure balance may have driven small-scale…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-02-11 Christopher Cain , Matthew McQuinn , Evan Scannapieco , Anson D'Aloisio , Hy Trac

Reionization is an inhomogeneous process, thought to begin in small ionized bubbles of the intergalactic medium (IGM) around overdense regions of galaxies. Recent Lyman-alpha (Ly$\alpha$) studies during the epoch of reionization show…

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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-31 S. Peng Oh , Zoltan Haiman , Martin J. Rees

Diffuse interstellar clouds show large abundances of H_3^+ which can be maintained only by a high ionization rate of H_2. Cosmic rays are the dominant ionization mechanism in this environment, so the large ionization rate implies a high…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2011-02-11 Nick Indriolo , Brian D. Fields , Benjamin J. McCall

The cosmological 21cm signal is a physics-rich probe of the early Universe, encoding information about both the ionization and the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM). The latter is likely governed by X-rays from…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2014-07-17 Fabio Pacucci , Andrei Mesinger , Stefano Mineo , Andrea Ferrara

We present a new method to infer parameters of the temperature-density relation in the intergalactic medium in the post-reionization epoch at $z\sim 2-4$. This method is based on the analysis of the Ly$\alpha$ absorbers distribution over…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2019-12-24 K. N. Telikova , P. S. Shternin , S. A. Balashev

I review recent progress and challenges in studies of the earliest galaxies, seen when the Universe was less than 1 billion years old. Can they be used as reliable tracers of the physics of cosmic reionization thereby complementing other,…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2014-11-14 Richard S. Ellis

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are excellent probes of the high-redshift Universe due to their high luminosities and the relatively simple intrinsic spectra of their afterglows. They can be used to estimate the fraction of neutral hydrogen (i.e.,…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-03-26 H. M. Fausey , A. J. van der Horst , N. R. Tanvir , K. Wiersema , J. P. U. Fynbo , D. Hartmann , A. de Ugarte Postigo

We develop an efficient method to study the effects of reionization history on the temperature-density relation of the intergalactic medium in the low density limit (overdensity less than 5). It is applied to the study of photo-reionization…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-24 Lam Hui , Nickolay Y. Gnedin

Latest precise cosmic-ray (CR) measurements and present gamma-ray observations have started challenging our understanding of CR transport and interaction in the Galaxy. Moreover, because the density of CRs is similar to the density of the…