The Growth of HiiRegions During Reionization

2004/03/31 by Steven Furlanetto, Steven R. Furlanetto, Matias Zaldarriaga +2 · 632 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Excursion #Formalism (music) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Intergalactic medium #Ion #Ionization #Mathematics #Observable #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Redshift #Reionization #Spectral density #Statistics #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/423025

published in The Astrophysical Journal 613(1), 1-15 (IOP Publishing) · 14 pages, 13 figures, submitted to ApJ

arxiv created 2004/03/31 · openalex publication_date 2004/09/20 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in understanding the reionization of hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM). One of the major outstanding questions is how this event proceeds on large scales. Motivated by numerical simulations, we develop a model for the growth of H II regions during the reionization era. We associate ionized regions with large-scale density fluctuations and use the excursion set formalism to model the resulting size distribution. We then consider ways in which to characterize the morphology of ionized regions. We show how to construct the power spectrum of fluctuations in the neutral hydrogen field. The power spectrum contains definite features from the H II regions that should be observable with the next generation of low-frequency radio telescopes through surveys of redshifted 21 cm emission from the reionization era. Finally, we also consider statistical descriptions beyond the power spectrum and show that our model of reionization qualitatively changes the distribution of neutral gas in the IGM.

Citations

• Small‐Scale Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature and Polarization Anisotropies Due to Patchy Reionization
• 21 Centimeter Tomography of the Intergalactic Medium at High Redshift
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• The Detectability of High-Redshift L[CLC]y[/CLC]α Emission Lines prior to the Reionization of the Universe
• An excursion set model of hierarchical clustering: ellipsoidal collapse and the moving barrier
• The Implications of Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Observations for Population III Star Formation Processes
• An analytical model for the history of cosmic star formation
• The history of star formation in a cold dark matter universe
• The Damping Wing of the Gunn-Peterson Absorption and Lyα Emitters in the Pre-Reionization Era
• Radio Foregrounds for the 21 Centimeter Tomography of the Neutral Intergalactic Medium at High Redshifts
• Simulating intergalactic medium reionization
• First‐Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe ( WMAP ) Observations: Determination of Cosmological Parameters
• Probing reionization with Lyman α emission lines
• Have we detected one of the sources responsible for an early reionization of the Universe?
• In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe

Cited by

• Local primordial non-Gaussianity from 'zero-bias' 21cm radiation during reionization
• On the Properties of Cosmological Ionization Fronts
• Was the Universe Reionized at Redshift 10?
• The impact of spin-temperature fluctuations on the 21-cm moments
• Detecting the Rise and Fall of 21 cm Fluctuations with the Murchison Widefield Array
• Estimation of HII Bubble Size Distribution from 21cm Power Spectrum with Artificial Neural Networks
• The Evolution Of 21 cm Structure (EOS): public, large-scale simulations of Cosmic Dawn and reionization
• Dark matter model favoured by reionization data: 7 keV sterile neutrino versus cold dark matter
• Constraining high-redshift X-ray sources with next generation 21-cm power spectrum measurements
• A Self-consistent Framework for Multiline Modeling in Line Intensity Mapping Experiments
• Tracing the sources of reionization in cosmological radiation hydrodynamics simulations
• An excursion-set model for the structure of giant molecular clouds and the interstellar medium
• Low-mass galaxy formation and the ionizing photon budget during reionization
• Antisymmetric Cross-correlation between H i and CO Line Intensity Maps as a New Probe of Cosmic Reionization
• 21 cm signal from cosmic dawn: imprints of spin temperature fluctuations and peculiar velocities
• Inhomogeneous reionization models in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations
• The ionizing background at the end of reionization
• Separating out the Alcock-Paczynski effect on 21-cm fluctuations
• The rise of the first stars: Supersonic streaming, radiative feedback, and 21-cm cosmology
• Was reionization complete by z∼ 5-6?
• Inside-out or outside-in: the topology of reionization in the photon-starved regime suggested by Lyα forest data
• A Flat Photoionization Rate at 2 ≤ z ≤ 4.2: Evidence for a Stellar-Dominated UV Background and against a Decline of Cosmic Star Formation beyond z ~ 3
• Effects of the sources of reionization on 21-cm redshift-space distortions