Related papers: Star Formation at High Redshift: A Population of E…
The history of the transition from a neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) to one that is almost fully ionized can reveal the character of cosmological ionizing sources. We study the evolution of the volume filling factor of HII and HeIII…
Recent evidence on the metal content of the high-redshift Lyman alpha forest seen in quasar spectra suggests that an early generation of galaxies enriched the intergalactic medium (IGM) at z ~ 5. We calculate the number of supernovae that…
Several observational and theoretical arguments suggest that starburst galaxies may rival quasars as sources of metagalactic ionizing radiation at redshifts z > 3. Reionization of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at z > 5 may arise, in part,…
The history of the transition from a neutral intergalactic medium to one that is almost fully ionized can reveal the character of cosmological ionizing sources. In this talk I will discuss the implications for rival reionization scenarios…
The reionization of cosmic hydrogen, left over from the big bang, increased its temperature to >~ 1.e4 K. This photo-heating resulted in an increase of the minimum mass of galaxies and hence a suppression of the cosmic star formation rate.…
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…
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…
The high ionization level and universal metallicity (1% solar) of the intergalactic gas at redshifts z<5 implies that nonlinear structure had started to form in the universe at earlier times than we currently probe. In Cold Dark Matter…
The cosmic star formation histories are evaluated for different minimum masses of the initial halo structures, with allowance for realistic gas outflows. With a minimum halo mass of 10^{7} - 10^{8} M_odot and a moderate outflow efficiency,…
There has been great progress in recent years in discovering star forming galaxies at high redshifts (z>5), close to the epoch of reionization of the intergalactic medium (IGM). The WFC3 and ACS cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope have…
The fraction of ionizing photons that escape their host galaxies and so are able to ionize hydrogen in the inter-galactic medium (IGM) is a critical parameter in analyses of the reionization era and early galaxy formation. Studies of the…
We investigate whether a single population of first stars could have influenced both the metal enrichment and reionization of the high-redshift intergalactic medium (IGM), by calculating the generated ionizing radiation per unit metal yield…
Early results from the JWST observations have reported a surprisingly high number of UV-bright galaxies at $z \geq 10$, which appears to challenge the theoretical predictions from standard galaxy formation models in the $\Lambda$CDM…
In popular cold dark matter cosmological scenarios, stars may have first appeared in significant numbers around a redshift of 10 or so, as the gas within protogalactic halos with virial temperatures in excess of 20,000 K (corresponding to…
The development of primordial inhomogeneities into the non-linear regime and the formation of the first astrophysical objects within dark matter halos mark the transition from a simple, neutral, cooling universe -- described by just a few…
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…
In order to derive information on the star formation history in the early universe we observed 6 high-redshift (z=3.4) quasars in the near-infrared to measure the relative iron and \mgii emission strengths. A detailed comparison of the…
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…
It has been argued that low-luminosity dwarf galaxies are the dominant source of ionizing radiation during cosmological reionization. The fraction of ionizing radiation that escapes into the intergalactic medium from dwarf galaxies with…
The Durham GALFORM semi-analytical galaxy formation model has been shown to reproduce the observed rest-frame 1500\AA\ luminosity function of galaxies well over the whole redshift range z=5-10. We show that in this model, this galaxy…