Helium reionization and the thermal proximity effect

Details Helium reionization and the thermal proximity effect Helium reionization and the thermal proximity effect

2010-04-27

arxiv.org/abs/1004.4765v1

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 401, Issue 1, pp. 77-87 (2010).

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

17 pages, 12 figures, for publication in MNRAS

Scientific paper

10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15667.x

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 using a radiative transfer (RT) code coupled to a particle-mesh (PM) N-body code. Neutral hydrogen and helium are initially ionized by a starburst spectrum, which is allowed to gradually evolve into a power law spectrum (fnu ~ nu^(-0.5)). Multiple simulations were performed with different times for the onset and dominance of the hard spectrum, with onset redshifts ranging from z = 3.5 to 5.5. The source is placed in a high-density region to mimic the expected local environment of a QSO. Simulations with the source placed in a low-density environment were also performed as control cases to explore the role of the environment on the properties of the surrounding IGM. We find in both cases that the IGM temperature within the HeIII region produced exceeds the IGM temperature before full helium reionization, resulting in a "thermal proximity effect", but that the temperature in the HeIII region increases systematically with distance from the source. With time the temperature relaxes with a reduced spread as a function of impact parameter along neighbouring lines of sight, although the trend continues to persist until z = 2. Such a trend could be detected using the widths of intervening metal absorption systems using high resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio spectra.

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