Probing the neutral fraction of the IGM with GRBs during the epoch of reionization

We show that near-infrared observations of the red side of the Lyα line from a single gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow cannot be used to constrain the global neutral fraction of the intergalactic medium (IGM),     , at the GRB's redshift to better than     . Some GRB sightlines will encounter more neutral hydrogen than others at fixed     owing to the patchiness of reionization. GRBs during the epoch of reionization will often bear no discernible signature of a neutral IGM in their afterglow spectra. We discuss the constraints on     from the   z = 6.3  burst, GRB050904, and quantify the probability of detecting a neutral IGM using future spectroscopic observations of high-redshift, near-infrared GRB afterglows. Assuming an observation with signal-to-noise ratio similar to the Subaru FOCAS spectrum of GRB050904 and that the column density distribution of damped Lyα absorbers is the same as measured at lower redshifts, a GRB from an epoch when     can be used to detect a partly neutral IGM at 97 per cent confidence level ≈10 per cent of the time (and, for an observation with three times the sensitivity, ≈30 per cent of the time).     

Probing the growth of supermassive black holes at z > 6 with LOFAR

H  ii regions surrounding supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in an otherwise still neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) are likely to be the most easily detectable sources by future 21-cm experiments like LOFAR. We have made predictions for the size distribution of such H  ii regions for several physically motivated models for BH growth at high redshift and compared this to the expected LOFAR sensitivity to these sources. The number of potentially detectable H  ii regions does not only depend on the ionization state of the IGM and the decoupling of the spin temperature of the neutral hydrogen from the cosmic microwave background temperature, but is also strongly sensitive to the rate of growth of BHs at high redshift. If the SMBHs at redshift 6 were built up via continuous Eddington-limited accretion from low mass seed BHs at high redshift, then LOFAR is not expected to detect isolated QSO H  ii regions at redshifts much larger than 6, and only if the IGM is still significantly neutral. If the high-redshift growth of BHs starts with massive seed BHs and is driven by short-lived accretion events following the merging of BH hosting galaxies then the detection of H  ii regions surrounding SMBHs may extend to redshifts as large as 8–9 but is still very sensitive to the redshift to which the IGM remains significantly neutral. The most optimistic predictions are for a model where the SMBHs at z > 6 have grown slowly. H  ii regions around SMBHs may then be detected to significantly larger redshifts.     

The association between gas and galaxies – I. CFHT spectroscopy and pair analysis

We investigate the relative distribution of the gaseous contents of the Universe (as traced by a sample of Lyα absorbers), and the luminous baryonic matter (as traced by a redshift survey of galaxies in the same volume searched for Lyα absorbers), along 16 lines of sight (LOS) between redshifts 0 and 1. Our galaxy redshift survey was made with the multi-object spectrograph on the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope and, when combined with galaxies from the literature in the same LOS, gives us a galaxy sample of 636 objects. By combining this with an absorption-line sample of 406 absorbing systems drawn from published works, we are able to study the relationship between gas and galaxies over the latter half of the age of the Universe. A correlation between absorbers and galaxies is detected out to separation of 1.5 Mpc. This correlation is weaker than the galaxy–galaxy correlation. There is also some evidence that the absorbing systems seen in C  iv are more closely related to galaxies, although this correlation could be with column density rather than metallicity. The above results are all consistent with the absorbing gas and the galaxies coexisting in dark matter filaments and knots as predicted by current models where the column density of the absorbing gas is correlated with the underlying matter density.     

The amplitude of mass density fluctuations at z 3.25 from the Ly forest of Q1422+231

The real-space optical-depth distribution along the line of sight to the QSO Q1422+231 is recovered from two HIRES spectra using a modified version of the inversion method proposed by Nusser & Haehnelt. The first two moments of the truncated optical-depth distribution are used to constrain the density-fluctuation amplitude of the intergalactic medium (IGM) assuming that the IGM is photoionized by a metagalactic UV background and obeys a temperaturedensity relation. The fluctuation amplitude and the power-law index of the relation between gas and neutral hydrogen (H  i ) density are degenerate. The rms of the IGM density at z 3.25 estimated from the first spectrum is with 1.56< <2 for plausible reionization histories. This corresponds to 0.9 2.1 with ( =1.7)=1.44±0.3. The values obtained from the second spectrum are higher by 20 per cent. If the IGM density traces the dark matter (DM) as suggested by numerical simulations we have measured the fluctuation amplitude of the DM density at an effective Jeans scale of a few 100 kpc. For cold dark matter (CDM)-like power spectra the amplitude of dark matter fluctuations on these small scales depends on the cosmological density parameter . For power spectra normalized to reproduce the space density of present-day clusters and with a slope parameter of =0.21 consistent with the observed galaxy power spectrum, the inferred can be expressed as: =0.61( /1.7)^1.3( x _J/0.62)^0.6 for a flat universe, and =0.91( /1.7)^1.3( x _J/0.62)^0.7 for a =0 universe. x _J is the effective Jeans scale in (comoving) h ¹ Mpc. Based on a suite of detailed mock spectra the 1 error is 25 per cent. The estimates increase with increasing . For the second spectrum we obtain 15 per cent lower values.     

The power spectrum of the Lyman-α clouds

We investigate the clustering properties of 13 QSO lines of sight in flat space, with average redshifts from z ≈2 to 4. We estimate the 1D power spectrum and the integral density of neighbours, and discuss their variation with respect to redshift and column density. We compare the results with standard CDM models, and estimate the power spectrum of Lyman- α clustering as a function of both redshift and column density. We find that (a) there is no significant periodicity or characteristic scale; (b) the clustering depends on both column density and redshift; (c) the clustering increases linearly only if at the same time the H  i column density decreases strongly with redshift. The results remain qualitatively the same, assuming an open cosmological model.     

Lyα damping wing constraints on inhomogeneous reionization

One well-known way to constrain the hydrogen neutral fraction,     , of the high-redshift intergalactic medium (IGM) is through the shape of the red damping wing of the Lyα absorption line. We examine this method's effectiveness in light of recent models showing that the IGM neutral fraction is highly inhomogeneous on large scales during reionization. Using both analytic models and 'seminumeric' simulations, we show that the 'picket-fence' absorption typical in reionization models introduces both scatter and a systematic bias to the measurement of     . In particular, we show that simple fits to the damping wing tend to overestimate the true neutral fraction in a partially ionized universe, with a fractional error of ∼30 per cent near the middle of reionization. This bias is generic to any inhomogeneous model. However, the bias is reduced and can even underestimate     if the observational sample only probes a subset of the entire halo population, such as quasars with large H  ii regions. We also find that the damping wing absorption profile is generally steeper than one would naively expect in a homogeneously ionized universe. The profile steepens and the sightline-to-sightline scatter increases as reionization progresses. Of course, the bias and scatter also depend on     and so can, at least in principle, be used to constrain it. Damping wing constraints must therefore be interpreted by comparison to theoretical models of inhomogeneous reionization.     

On the importance of high-redshift intergalactic voids

We investigate the properties of 1D flux 'voids' (connected regions in the flux distribution above the mean-flux level) by comparing hydrodynamical simulations of large cosmological volumes with a set of observed high-resolution spectra at z ∼ 2. After addressing the effects of box size and resolution, we study how the void distribution changes when the most significant cosmological and astrophysical parameters are varied. We find that the void distribution in the flux is in excellent agreement with predictions of the standard Λcold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmology, which also fits other flux statistics remarkably well. We then model the relation between flux voids and the corresponding 1D gas-density field along the line of sight and make a preliminary attempt to connect the 1D properties of the gas-density field to the 3D dark matter distribution at the same redshift. This provides a framework that allows statistical interpretations of the void population at high redshift using observed quasar spectra, and eventually it will enable linking the void properties of the high-redshift universe with those at lower redshifts, which are better known.     

Irradiation pressure effects in close binary systems

We test an analytic model for the two-point correlations of galaxy clusters in redshift space using the Hubble volume N -body simulations. The correlation function of clusters shows no enhancement along the line of sight, owing to the lack of any virialized structures in the cluster distribution. However, the distortion of the clustering pattern arising from coherent bulk motions is clearly visible. The distribution of cluster peculiar motions is well described by a Gaussian, except in the extreme high-velocity tails. The simulations produce a small but significant number of clusters with large peculiar motions. The form of the redshift-space power spectrum is strongly influenced by errors in measured cluster redshifts in extant surveys. When these errors are taken into account, the model reproduces the power spectrum recovered from the simulation to an accuracy of 15 per cent or better over a decade in wavenumber. We compare our analytic predictions with the power spectrum measured from the APM cluster redshift survey. The cluster power spectrum constrains the amplitude of density fluctuations, as measured by the linear rms variance in spheres of radius 8  h ⁻¹ Mpc, denoted by σ ₈. When combined with the constraints on σ ₈ and the density parameter Ω derived from the local abundance of clusters, we find a best-fitting cold dark matter model with     and     , for a power spectrum shape that matches that measured for galaxies. However, for the best-fitting value of Ω and given the value of Hubble's constant from recent measurements, the assumed shape of the power spectrum is incompatible with the most readily motivated predictions from the cold dark matter paradigm.     

Apparent and actual galaxy cluster temperatures

The redshift evolution of the galaxy cluster temperature function is a powerful probe of cosmology. However, its determination requires the measurement of redshifts for all clusters in a catalogue, which is likely to prove challenging for large catalogues expected from XMM-Newton , which may contain of the order of 2000 clusters with measurable temperatures, distributed around the sky. In this paper we study the apparent cluster temperature, which can be obtained without cluster redshifts. We show that the apparent temperature function itself is of limited use in constraining cosmology, and so concentrate our focus on studying how apparent temperatures can be combined with other X-ray information to constrain the cluster redshift. We also briefly study the circumstances under which the non-thermal spectral features can provide redshift information.     

The thermal history of the intergalactic medium

At redshifts z ≳2, most of the baryons reside in the smooth intergalactic medium which is responsible for the low column density Ly α forest. This photoheated gas follows a tight temperature–density relation which introduces a cut-off in the distribution of widths of the Ly α absorption lines ( b -parameters) as a function of column density. We have measured this cut-off in a sample of nine high-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio quasar spectra and determined the thermal evolution of the intergalactic medium in the redshift range 2.0–4.5. At a redshift z ∼3, the temperature at the mean density shows a peak and the gas becomes nearly isothermal. We interpret this as evidence for the reionization of He  ii .     

The growth of structure in the intergalactic medium

A 'stochastic adhesion' model is introduced, with the purpose of describing the formation and evolution of mildly non-linear structures, such as sheets and filaments, in the intergalactic medium (IGM), after hydrogen reionization. The model is based on replacing the overall force acting on the baryon fluid – which results from the combination of local gravity, pressure gradients and Hubble drag – by a mock external force, self-consistently calculated from first-order perturbation theory. A small kinematic viscosity term prevents shell-crossing on small scales (which arises because of the approximate treatment of pressure gradients). The emerging scheme is an extension of the well-known adhesion approximation for the dark matter dynamics, from which it differs only by the presence of a small-scale 'random' force, characterizing the IGM. Our algorithm is the ideal tool to obtain the skeleton of the IGM distribution, which is responsible for the structure observed in the low column density Ly α forest in the absorption spectra of distant quasars.     

Weak gravitational lensing in the standard cold dark matter model, using an algorithm for three-dimensional shear

We investigate the effects of weak gravitational lensing in the standard cold dark matter cosmology, using an algorithm that evaluates the shear in three dimensions. The algorithm has the advantage of variable softening for the particles, and our method allows the appropriate angular diameter distances to be applied to every evaluation location within each three-dimensional simulation box. We investigate the importance of shear in the distance–redshift relation, and find it to be very small. We also establish clearly defined values for the smoothness parameter in the relation, finding its value to be at least 0.83 at all redshifts in our simulations. From our results, obtained by linking the simulation boxes back to source redshifts of 4, we are able to observe the formation of structure in terms of the computed shear, and also note that the major contributions to the shear come from a very broad range of redshifts. We show the probability distributions for the magnification, source ellipticity and convergence, and also describe the relationships amongst these quantities for a range of source redshifts. We find a broad range of magnifications and ellipticities; for sources at a redshift of 4, 97.5 per cent of all lines of sight show magnifications up to 1.39 and ellipticities up to 0.23. There is clear evidence that the magnification is not linear in the convergence, as might be expected for weak lensing, but contains contributions from higher order terms in both the convergence and the shear. Our results for the one-point distribution functions are generally different from those obtained by other authors using two-dimensional (planar) approaches, and we suggest reasons for the differences. Our magnification distributions for sources at redshifts of 1 and 0.5 are also very different from the results used by other authors to assess the effect on the perceived value of the deceleration parameter, and we briefly address this question.     

Status of CMB polarization measurements from DASI and other experiments

We review the current status and future plans for polarization measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, as well as the cosmology these measurements will address. After a long period of increasingly sensitive upper limits, the DASI experiment has detected the E-mode polarization and both the DASI and WMAP experiments have detected the TE correlation. These detections provide confirmation of the standard model of adiabatic primordial density fluctuations consistent with inflationary models. The WMAP TE correlation on large angular scales provides direct evidence of significant reionization at higher redshifts than had previously been supposed. These detections mark the beginning of a new era in CMB measurements and the rich cosmology that can be gleaned from them.     

Redshifted 21-cm observations of high-redshift quasar proximity zones

The introduction of low-frequency radio arrays is expected to revolutionize the study of the reionization epoch. Observation of the contrast in redshifted 21-cm emission between a large H  ii region and the surrounding neutral intergalactic medium (IGM) will be the simplest and most easily interpreted signature. However, the highest redshift quasars known are thought to reside in an ionized IGM. Using a semi-analytic model we describe the redshifted 21-cm signal from the IGM surrounding quasars discovered using the i -drop-out technique (i.e. quasars at   z ∼ 6  ). We argue that while quasars at   z < 6.5  seem to reside in the post-overlap IGM, they will still provide valuable probes of the late stages of the overlap era because the light-travel time across a quasar proximity zone should be comparable to the duration of overlap. For redshifted 21-cm observations within a 32-MHz bandpass, we find that the subtraction of a spectrally smooth foreground will not remove spectral features due to the proximity zone. These features could be used to measure the neutral hydrogen content of the IGM during the late stages of reionization. The density of quasars at   z ∼ 6  is now well constrained. We use the measured quasar luminosity function to estimate the prospects for discovery of high-redshift quasars in fields that will be observed by the Murchison Widefield Array.     

The Magnetic Field of the Solar Corona from Pulsar Observations

We present a novel experiment with the capacity to independently measure both the electron density and the magnetic field of the solar corona. We achieve this through measurement of the excess Faraday rotation resulting from propagation of the polarised emission from a number of pulsars through the magnetic field of the solar corona. This method yields independent measures of the integrated electron density, via dispersion of the pulsed signal and the magnetic field, via the amount of Faraday rotation. In principle this allows the determination of the integrated magnetic field through the solar corona along many lines of sight without any assumptions regarding the electron density distribution. We present a detection of an increase in the rotation measure of the pulsar J1801-2304 of approximately 170 rad m² at an elongation of 0.96° from the centre of the solar disc. This corresponds to a lower limit of the magnetic field strength along this line of sight of >41.8 nT. The lack of precision in the integrated electron density measurement restricts this result to a limit, but application of coronal plasma models can further constrain this to approximately 0.5 μT, along a path passing 2.7 solar radii from the solar limb, which is consistent with predictions obtained using extensions to the source surface models published by the Wilcox Solar Observatory.     

Intergalactic medium metal enrichment through dust sputtering

We study the motion of dust grains into the intergalactic medium (IGM) around redshift   z = 3  , to test the hypothesis that grains can efficiently pollute the gas with metals through sputtering. We use the results available in the literature for radiation-driven dust ejection from galaxies as initial conditions and follow the motion onwards. Via this mechanism, grains are ejected into the IGM with velocities  >100 km s⁻¹  ; as they move supersonically, grains can be efficiently eroded by non-thermal sputtering. However, Coulomb and collisional drag forces effectively reduce the charged grain velocity. Up-to-date sputtering yields for graphite and silicate (olivine) grains have been derived using the code transport of ions in matter ( trim ), for which we provide analytic fits. After training our method on a homogeneous density case, we analyse the grain motion and sputtering in the IGM density field as derived from a Λ cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological simulation at   z = 3.27  . We found that only large  ( a ≳ 0.1μm)  grains can travel up to considerable distances (few  ×100 kpc  physical) before being stopped. Resulting metallicities show a well-defined trend with overdensity δ. The maximum metallicities are reached for  10 < δ < 100  [corresponding to systems, in quasi-stellar object (QSO) absorption spectra, with  14.5 < log N (H  i ) < 16  ]. However the distribution of sputtered metals is very inhomogeneous, with only a small fraction of the IGM volume polluted by dust sputtering (filling factors of 18 per cent for Si and 6 per cent for C). For the adopted size distribution, grains are never completely destroyed; nevertheless, the extinction and gas photoelectric heating effects resulting from this population of intergalactic grains are well below current detection limits.     

The correlation between star formation and 21-cm emission during the reionization epoch

Reionization is thought to be dominated by low-mass galaxies, while direct observations of resolved galaxies probe only the most massive, rarest objects. The cross-correlation between fluctuations in the surface brightness of the cumulative Lyα emission (which serves as a proxy for the star formation rate) and the redshifted 21-cm signal from neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) will directly probe the causal link between the production of ionizing photons in galaxies and the reionization of the IGM. We discuss the prospects for detecting this cross-correlation for unresolved galaxies. We find that on angular scales ≲10 arcmin detection will be practical using wide-field near-infrared (near-IR) imaging from space in combination with the forthcoming Mileura Wide-field Array – Low Frequency Demonstrator. When redshifted 21-cm observations of the neutral IGM are combined with space-based near-IR imaging of Lyα emission, the detection on angular scales ≲3 arcmin will be limited by the sensitivity of the 21-cm signal, even when a small-aperture optical telescope (∼2 m) and a moderate field of view (∼10 deg²) are used. On scales ≳3 arcmin, the measurement of cross-correlation will be limited by the accuracy of the foreground sky subtraction.     

Semi-analytic simulations of galactic winds: volume filling factor, ejection of metals and parameter study

We present a semi-analytic treatment of galactic winds within high-resolution, large-scale cosmological N -body simulations of a Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) universe. The evolution of winds is investigated by following the expansion of supernova-driven superbubbles around the several hundred thousand galaxies that form in an approximately spherical region of space with diameter 52  h ⁻¹ Mpc and mean density close to the mean density of the universe. We focus our attention on the impact of winds on the diffuse intergalactic medium. Initial conditions for mass loss at the base of winds are taken from Shu, Mo & Mao. Results are presented for the volume filling factor and the mass fraction of the intergalactic medium (IGM) affected by winds, and their dependence on the model parameters is carefully investigated. The mass-loading efficiency of bubbles is a key factor to determine the evolution of winds and their global impact on the IGM: the higher the mass loading, the later the IGM is enriched with metals. Galaxies with 10⁹ < M _★ < 10¹⁰ M_⊙ are responsible for most of the metals ejected into the IGM at   z = 3  , while galaxies with   M _★ < 10⁹ M_⊙   give a non-negligible contribution only at higher redshifts, when larger galaxies have not yet assembled. We find a higher mean IGM metallicity than Lyα forest observations suggest, and we argue that the discrepancy may be explained by the high temperatures of a large fraction of the metals in winds, which may not leave detectable imprints in absorption in the Lyα forest.     

On the small-scale clustering of the Lyα forest clouds

Recent measurements of the autocorrelation function of the Ly α clouds are analysed from the point of view of a simple model with strong clustering on the small scales. It is shown that this toy model reproduces fairly well the important linear relation between amplitude of the absorber autocorrelation function and neutral hydrogen column density. In addition, it predicts a correct evolutionary trend of correlation amplitudes. Some possible ramifications of these results are discussed.     

A wavelet analysis of the spectra of quasi-stellar objects

The temperature of the intergalactic medium (IGM) is an important factor in determining the linewidths of the absorption lines in the Ly α forest. We present a method to characterize the linewidth distribution using a decomposition of an Ly α spectrum in terms of discrete wavelets. Such wavelets form an orthogonal basis, so the decomposition is unique. We demonstrate using hydrodynamic simulations that the mean and dispersion of the wavelet amplitudes are strongly correlated with both the temperature of the absorbing gas and its dependence on the gas density. Since wavelets are also localized in space, we are able to analyse the temperature distribution as a function of position along the spectrum. We illustrate how this method could be used to identify fluctuations in the IGM temperature that might result from late reionization or local effects.