Gauging the Contribution of X-ray Sources to Reionization Through the Kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect

Abstract

Measurements of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect from instruments such as the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) will soon put improved constraints on reionization. Popular models assume that UV photons alone are responsible for reionization of the intergalactic medium. We explore the effects of a significant contribution of X-rays to reionization on the kSZ signal. Because X-rays have a large mean free path through the neutral intergalactic medium, they introduce partial ionization in between the sharp-edged bubbles created by UV photons. This smooth ionization component changes the power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies. We quantify this effect by running semi-numerical simulations of reionization. We test a number of different models of reionization without X-rays that have varying physical parameters, but which are constrained to have similar total optical depths to electron scattering. These are then compared to models with varying levels of contribution to reionization from X-rays. We find that models with more than a 10% contribution from X-rays produce a significantly lower power spectrum of temperature anisotropies than all the UV-only models tested. The expected sensitivity of SPT and ACT may be insufficient to distinguish between our models, however, a non-detection of the kSZ signal from the epoch of reionization could result from the contribution of X-rays. It will be important for future missions with improved sensitivity to consider the impact of X-ray sources on reionization.

11 pages, 4 figures, modified to reflect updated SPT error bars, submitted to JCAP

References in corpus (7)

• Seven-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• Relative Role of Stars and Quasars in Cosmic Reionization
• The Kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect from Radiative Transfer Simulations of Patchy Reionization
• Time-evolution of ionization and heating around first stars and miniquasars
• The correlation between the distribution of galaxies and 21cm emission at high redshifts
• Modification of the 21-cm power spectrum by X-rays during the epoch of reionisation

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Signatures of X-rays in the early Universe
• Reionization on Large Scales I: A Parametric Model Constructed from Radiation-Hydrodynamic Simulations
• The Kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect from Reionization: Simulated Full Sky Maps at Arcminute Resolution
• Studying the morphology of reionisation with the triangle correlation function of phases
• Reionization on Large Scales II: Detecting Patchy Reionization through Cross Correlation of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Heating and Ionization of the Primordial Intergalactic Medium by High Mass X-ray Binaries