Related papers: The Full Re-Ionization of Helium
The temperature of the diffuse, photo-heated intergalactic medium (IGM) depends on its reionization history because the thermal time scales are long. The widths of the hydrogen Lyman-alpha absorption lines seen in the spectra of distant…
Despite decades of effort, the timing and duration of He II reionization, as well as its morphology and the properties of the quasars believed to drive it, are still not well constrained. In this paper we present a new method to study both…
We examine the temperature structure of the intergalactic medium IGM) surounding a hard radiation source, such as a Quasi-Stellar Object (QSO), as it responds to the onset of helium reionization by the source. We model the reionization…
The temperature of the low-density intergalactic medium is set by the balance between adiabatic cooling resulting from the expansion of the universe, and photo-heating by the UV-background. A sudden injection of entropy from the…
We present measurements of the intergalactic medium (IGM) temperature within ~5 proper Mpc of seven luminous quasars at z~6. The constraints are obtained from the Doppler widths of Lyman-alpha absorption lines in the quasar near-zones and…
Using hydrodynamical simulations coupled to a radiative transfer code, we study the additional heating effects in the intergalactic medium (IGM) produced by $z\sim 6$ quasars in their near-zones. If helium is predominantly in HeII to begin…
Observations of the intergalactic medium (IGM) suggest that quasars reionize HeII in the IGM at z ~ 3. We have run a set of 190 and 430 comoving Mpc simulations of HeII being reionized by quasars to develop an understanding of the nature of…
Lyman-alpha forest absorption spectra towards quasars at z ~ 6 show regions of enhanced transmission close to their source. Several authors have argued that the apparently small sizes of these regions indicate that quasar ionization fronts…
Measurements of the intergalactic medium (IGM) temperature provide a potentially powerful constraint on the reionisation history due to the thermal imprint left by the photo-ionisation of neutral hydrogen. However, until recently IGM…
The thermal state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) provides an indirect probe of both the HI and HeII reionisation epochs. Current constraints on the IGM temperature from the Lya forest are restricted to the redshift range 2<z<4.5,…
The reionization of helium is thought to occur at $2.5\lesssim z\lesssim4$, marking the last phase transition and final global heating event of the intergalactic medium (IGM). Since it is driven by rare quasars, helium reionization should…
A variety of observations now indicate that intergalactic helium was fully ionized by z~3. The most recent measurements of the high-redshift quasar luminosity function imply that these sources had produced ~2.5 ionizing photons per helium…
The temperature of the low-density intergalactic medium is set by the balance between adiabatic cooling resulting from the expansion of the universe, and photo-heating by the UV-background. We have analysed the Lyman-alpha forest of eleven…
We study the impact of inhomogeneous hydrogen reionization on the thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium (IGM) using hydrodynamic + radiative transfer simulations where reionization is completed either early (z ~ 9) or late (z ~ 6).…
We study the ionization and thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium during the epoch of \heii reionization by means of radiation hydrodynamical cosmological simulations. We post-process baryonic density fields from a standard…
At redshifts z >~ 2, most of the baryons reside in the smooth intergalactic medium which is responsible for the low column density Lyman-alpha forest. This photoheated gas follows a tight temperature-density relation which introduces a…
The reionization of the second electron of helium (HeII) leaves important imprints on the thermal and ionization state of the intergalactic medium (IGM). Observational evidence suggests that HeII reionization ended at $z \simeq 3$ due to…
The absorption by neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) produces the Ly$\alpha$ forest in the spectra of quasars. The Ly$\alpha$ forest absorbers have a broad distribution of neutral hydrogen column density $N_{\rm HI}$ and…
The Lyman alpha absorption from intergalactic, once-ionized helium (HeII) has been measured with HST in four quasars over the last few years, over the redshift range 2.4 < z < 3.2. These observations have indicated that the HeII…
We examine the impact of helium reionization on the structure of the intergalactic medium (IGM). We model the reionization using a radiative transfer (RT) code coupled to the combined gravity hydrodynamics code Enzo. Neutral hydrogen and…