Galactic Outflows and Photoionization Heating in the Reionization Epoch

Details Galactic Outflows and Photoionization Heating in the Reionization Epoch Galactic Outflows and Photoionization Heating in the Reionization Epoch

2011-06-21

arxiv.org/abs/1106.4321v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

23 pages, 15 Figures, accepted to ApJ

Scientific paper

We carry out a new suite of cosmological radiation hydrodynamic simulations and explore the relative impacts on reionization-epoch star formation of galactic outflows and photoionization heating. By itself, an extragalactic ultraviolet background (EUVB) suppresses the luminosity function by less than 50% at z=6, overproducing the observed galaxy abundance by a factor of 3-5. Galactic outflows restore agreement with observations without preventing Population II star formation from reionizing the Universe by z=6. The resulting EUVB suppresses star formation in halos with virial temperatures below 10^5K but has a weaker impact in more massive halos. Nonetheless, the low-mass halos contribute up to 50% of all ionizing photons owing to the EUVB's inhomogeneity. Overall, star formation rate scales as halo mass M_h to the 1.3-1.4 in halos with $M_h=10^{8.2--10.2}\msun$. This is a steeper dependence than is often assumed in reionization models, boosting the expected power spectrum of 21 centimeter fluctuations on large scales. The luminosity function rises steeply to at least M_1600=-13, indicating that reionization was driven by faint galaxies (M_1600 >= -15) that have not yet been observed. Our models cannot simultaneously explain observations of galaxies, the cosmic microwave background, and the intergalactic medium. Increased dynamic range will alleviate the existing discrepancies, but observations may still require additional physics such as a variable ionizing escape fraction (abridged).

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