| 1. |
- Datta, Kanan K., et al.
(författare)
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Light-cone effect on the reionization 21-cm power spectrum
- 2012
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 424:3, s. 1877-1891
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Observations of redshifted 21-cm radiation from neutral hydrogen during the epoch of reionization are considered to constitute the most promising tool to probe that epoch. One of the major goals of the first generation of low-frequency radio telescopes is to measure the 3D 21-cm power spectrum. However, the 21-cm signal could evolve substantially along the line-of-sight (LOS) direction of an observed 3D volume, since the received signal from different planes transverses to the LOS originated from different look-back times and could therefore be statistically different. Using numerical simulations we investigate this so-called light-cone effect on the spherically averaged 3D 21-cm power spectrum. For this version of the power spectrum, we find that the effect mostly averages out and observe a smaller change in the power spectrum compared to the amount of evolution in the mean 21-cm signal and its rms variations along the LOS direction. Nevertheless, changes up to similar to 50?per cent at large scales are possible. In general, the power is enhanced/suppressed at large/small scales when the effect is included. The cross-over mode below/above which the power is enhanced/suppressed moves towards larger scales as reionization proceeds. When considering the 3D power spectrum we find it to be anisotropic at the late stages of reionization and on large scales. The effect is dominated by the evolution of the ionized fraction of hydrogen during reionization and including peculiar velocities hardly changes these conclusions. We present simple analytical models which explain qualitatively all the features we see in the simulations.
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| 2. |
- Datta, Kanan K., et al.
(författare)
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Prospects of observing a quasar H ii region during the epoch of reionization with the redshifted 21-cm signal
- 2012
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 424:1, s. 762-778
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present a study of the impact of a bright quasar on the redshifted 21-cm signal during the epoch of reionization (EoR). Using three different cosmological radiative transfer simulations, we investigate if quasars are capable of substantially changing the size and morphology of the H ii regions they are born in. We choose stellar and quasar luminosities in a way that is favourable to seeing such an effect. We find that even the most luminous of our quasar models is not able to increase the size of its native H ii region substantially beyond those of large H ii regions produced by clustered stellar sources alone. However, the quasar H ii region is found to be more spherical. We next investigate the prospects of detecting such H ii regions in the redshifted 21-cm data from the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) by means of a matched filter technique. We find that H ii regions with radii similar to 25 comoving Mpc or larger should have a sufficiently high detection probability for 1200 h of integration time. Although the matched filter can in principle distinguish between more and less spherical regions, we find that when including realistic system noise this distinction can no longer be made. The strong foregrounds are found not to pose a problem for the matched filter technique. We also demonstrate that when the quasar position is known, the redshifted 21-cm data can still be used to set upper limits on the ionizing photon rate of the quasar. If both the quasar position and its luminosity are known, the redshifted 21-cm data can set new constraints on quasar lifetimes.
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| 3. |
- Friedrich, Martina M., 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Radiative Transfer of energetic photons : X-rays and helium ionization in C2-Ray
- 2012
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 421:3, s. 2232-2250
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present an extension to the short-characteristic ray-tracing and non-equilibrium photoionization code C2-RAY. The new version includes the effects of helium and improved multifrequency heating. The motivation for this work is to be able to deal with harder ionizing spectra, such as from quasar-like sources during cosmic reionization. We review the basic algorithmic ingredients of C2-RAY before describing the changes implemented, which include a treatment of the full on-the-spot (OTS) approximation, secondary ionization, and multifrequency photoionization and heating. We performed a series of tests against equilibrium solutions from CLOUDY as well as comparisons to the hydrogen-only solutions by C2-RAY in the extensive cosmological radiative transfer code comparison project. We show that the full, coupled OTS approximation is more accurate than the simplified, uncoupled one. We find that also with helium and a multifrequency setup, long time-steps (up to ~10 per cent of the recombination time) still give accurate results for the ionization fractions. On the other hand, accurate results for the temperature set strong constraints on the time-step. The details of these constraints depend, however, on the optical depth of the cells. We use the new version of the code to confirm that the assumption made in many reionization simulations, namely that helium is singly ionized everywhere where hydrogen is, is indeed valid when the sources have stellar-like spectra.
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| 4. |
- Friedrich, Martina M., et al.
(författare)
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Topology and sizes of H II regions during cosmic reionization
- 2011
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 413:2, s. 1353-1372
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We use the results of large-scale simulations of reionization to explore methods for characterizing the topology and sizes of H ii regions during reionization. We use four independent methods for characterizing the sizes of ionized regions. Three of them give us a full size distribution: the friends-of-friends (FoF) method, the spherical average (SPA) method and the power spectrum (PS) of the ionized fraction. The latter three methods are complementary: while the FoF method captures the size distribution of the small-scale H ii regions, which contribute only a small amount to the total ionization fraction, the SPA method provides a smoothed measure for the average size of the H ii regions constituting the main contribution to the ionized fraction, and the PS does the same while retaining more details on the size distribution. Our fourth method for characterizing the sizes of the H ii regions is the average size which results if we divide the total volume of the H ii regions by their total surface area (i.e. 3V/A), computed in terms of the ratio of the corresponding Minkowski functionals of the ionized fraction field. To characterize the topology of the ionized regions, we calculate the evolution of the Euler characteristic. We find that the evolution of the topology during the first half of reionization is consistent with inside-out reionization of a Gaussian density field. We use these techniques to investigate the dependence of the size and topology on some basic source properties, such as the halo mass-to-light ratio, susceptibility of haloes to negative feedback from reionization and the minimum halo mass for sources to form. We find that the suppression of ionizing sources within ionized regions slows the growth of H ii regions and also changes their size distribution. Additionally, the topology of simulations including suppression is more complex, as indicated by the evolution of the Euler characteristic of the ionized regions. We find the density and ionized fraction to be correlated on large scales, in agreement with the inside-out picture of reionization.
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| 5. |
- Harker, Geraint J. A., et al.
(författare)
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Detection and extraction of signals from the epoch of reionization using higher-order one-point statistics
- 2009
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 393, s. 1449-1458
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Detecting redshifted 21-cm emission from neutral hydrogen in the early Universe promises to give direct constraints on the epoch of reionization (EoR). It will, though, be very challenging to extract the cosmological signal (CS) from foregrounds and noise which are orders of magnitude larger. Fortunately, the signal has some characteristics which differentiate it from the foregrounds and noise, and we suggest that using the correct statistics may tease out signatures of reionization. We generate mock data cubes simulating the output of the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) EoR experiment. These cubes combine realistic models for Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds and the noise with three different simulations of the CS. We fit out the foregrounds, which are smooth in the frequency direction, to produce residual images in each frequency band. We denoise these images and study the skewness of the one-point distribution in the images as a function of frequency. We find that, under sufficiently optimistic assumptions, we can recover the main features of the redshift evolution of the skewness in the 21-cm signal. We argue that some of these features - such as a dip at the onset of reionization, followed by a rise towards its later stages - may be generic, and give us a promising route to a statistical detection of reionization.
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| 6. |
- Ichikawa, Kazuhide, et al.
(författare)
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Measuring the history of cosmic reionization using the 21-cm probability distribution function from simulations
- 2010
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 406:4, s. 2521-2532
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The 21-cm probability distribution function (PDF; i.e. distribution of pixel brightness temperatures) is expected to be highly non-Gaussian during reionization and to provide important information on the distribution of density and ionization. We measure the 21-cm PDF as a function of redshift in a large simulation of cosmic reionization and propose a simple empirical fit. Guided by the simulated PDF, we then carry out a maximum likelihood analysis of the ability of upcoming experiments to measure the shape of the 21-cm PDF and derive from it the cosmic reionization history. Under the strongest assumptions, we find that upcoming experiments can measure the reionization history in the mid to late stages of reionization to 1-10 per cent accuracy. Under a more flexible approach that allows for four free parameters at each redshift, a similar accuracy requires the lower noise levels of second-generation 21-cm experiments.
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| 7. |
- Iliev, Ilian T., et al.
(författare)
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Can 21-cm observations discriminate between high-mass and low-mass galaxies as reionization sources?
- 2012
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 423:3, s. 2222-2253
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The prospect of detecting the first galaxies by observing their impact on the intergalactic medium (IGM) as they reionized it during the first billion years leads us to ask whether such indirect observations are capable of diagnosing which types of galaxies were most responsible for reionization. We attempt to answer this with new large-scale radiative transfer simulations of reionization including the entire mass range of atomically cooling haloes (M > 108 M?). We divide these haloes into two groups, high-mass, atomically cooling haloes, or HMACHs (M > 109 M?), and low-mass, atomically cooling haloes, or LMACHs (108 < M < 109 M?), the latter being susceptible to negative feedback due to Jeans mass filtering in ionized regions, which leads to a process we refer to as self-regulation. We focus here on predictions of the redshifted 21-cm emission, to see if upcoming observations are capable of distinguishing a universe ionized primarily by HMACHs from one in which both HMACHs and LMACHs are responsible, and to see how these results depend upon the uncertain source efficiencies. We find that 21-cm fluctuation power spectra observed by the first-generation Epoch of Reionization 21-cm radio interferometer arrays should be able to distinguish the case of reionization by HMACHs alone from that by both HMACHs and LMACHs, together. Some reionization scenarios, e.g. one with abundant low-efficiency sources versus one with self-regulation, yield very similar power spectra and rms evolution and thus can only be discriminated by their different mean reionization history and 21-cm probability distribution function (PDF) distributions. We also find that the skewness of the 21-cm PDF distribution smoothed with Low Frequency Array (LOFAR)-like resolution shows a clear feature correlated with the rise of the rms due to patchiness. This is independent of the reionization scenario and thus provides a new approach for detecting the rise of large-scale patchiness. The peak epoch of the 21-cm rms fluctuations depends significantly on the beam and bandwidth smoothing size as well as on the reionization scenario and can occur for ionized fractions as low as 30 per cent and as high as 70 per cent. Measurements of the mean photoionization rates are sensitive to the average density of the regions being studied and therefore could be strongly skewed in certain cases. Finally, the simulation volume employed has very modest effects on the results during the early and intermediate stages of reionization, but late-time signatures could be significantly affected.
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| 8. |
- Iliev, Ilian T., et al.
(författare)
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Cosmological radiative transfer comparison project - II. The radiation-hydrodynamic tests
- 2009
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; , s. 1313-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The development of radiation hydrodynamical methods that are able to follow gas dynamics and radiative transfer (RT) self-consistently is key to the solution of many problems in numerical astrophysics. Such fluid flows are highly complex, rarely allowing even for approximate analytical solutions against which numerical codes can be tested. An alternative validation procedure is to compare different methods against each other on common problems, in order to assess the robustness of the results and establish a range of validity for the methods. Previously, we presented such a comparison for a set of pure RT tests (i.e. for fixed, non-evolving density fields). This is the second paper of the Cosmological Radiative Transfer Comparison Project, in which we compare nine independent RT codes directly coupled to gas dynamics on three relatively simple astrophysical hydrodynamics problems: (i) the expansion of an HII region in a uniform medium, (ii) an ionization front in a 1/r2 density profile with a flat core and (iii) the photoevaporation of a uniform dense clump. Results show a broad agreement between the different methods and no big failures, indicating that the participating codes have reached a certain level of maturity and reliability. However, many details still do differ, and virtually every code has showed some shortcomings and has disagreed, in one respect or another, with the majority of the results. This underscores the fact that no method is universal and all require careful testing of the particular features which are most relevant to the specific problem at hand.
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| 9. |
- Iliev, Ilian T., et al.
(författare)
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Current models of the observable consequences of cosmic reionization and their detectability
- 2008
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Blackwell Publishing. - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 384:3, s. 863-874
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A number of large current experiments aim to detect the signatures of the cosmic reionization at redshifts z > 6. Their success depends crucially on understanding the character of the reionization process and its observable consequences and designing the best strategies to use. We use large-scale simulations of cosmic reionization to evaluate the reionization signatures at redshifted 21-cm and small-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in the best current model for the background universe, with fundamental cosmological parameters given by Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe three-year results. We find that the optimal frequency range for observing the ‘global step’ of the 21-cm emission is 120–150 MHz, while statistical studies should aim at 140–160 MHz, observable by GMRT. Some strongly non-Gaussian brightness features should be detectable at frequencies up to ∼190 MHz. In terms of sensitivity-signal trade-off relatively low resolutions, corresponding to beams of at least a few arcminutes, are preferable. The CMB anisotropy signal from the kinetic Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect from reionized patches peaks at tens of μK at arcminute scales and has an rms of ∼1 μK, and should be observable by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the South Pole Telescope. We discuss the various observational issues and the uncertainties involved, mostly related to the poorly known reionization parameters and, to a lesser extend, to the uncertainties in the background cosmology.
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| 10. |
- Iliev, Ilian T., et al.
(författare)
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Reionization of the Local Group of galaxies
- 2011
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 413:3, s. 2093-2102
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present the first detailed structure formation and radiative transfer simulations of the reionization history of our cosmic neighbourhood. To this end, we follow the formation of the Local Group of galaxies and nearby clusters by means of constrained simulations, which use the available observational constraints to construct a representation of those structures which reproduces their actual positions and properties at the present time. We find that the reionization history of the Local Group is strongly dependent on the assumed photon production efficiencies of the ionizing sources, which are still poorly constrained. If sources are relatively efficient, i.e. the process is 'photon-rich', the Local Group is primarily ionized externally by the nearby clusters. Alternatively, if the sources are inefficient, i.e. reionization is 'photon-poor' the Local Group evolves largely isolated and reionizes itself. The mode of reionization, external versus internal, has important implications for the evolution of our neighbourhood, in terms of e.g. its satellite galaxy populations and primordial stellar populations. This therefore provides an important avenue for understanding the young universe by detailed studies of our nearby structures.
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