A Short Introduction to Reionization Physics

Abstract

The epoch of reionization probes the state of our universe when the very first stars formed and ionized the hydrogen atoms in the surrounding medium. Since the epoch has not yet been probed observationally, it is often called the "final frontier" of observational cosmology. This final frontier is attracting a lot of attention because of the availability of a large number of telescopes in a wide variety of wavebands. This review article summarizes some of the concepts required to understand the interesting physics of reionization and how to analyze the high-redshift universe using related observations.

Review article published in a special issue of General Relativity and Gravitation in memory of Professor T. Padmanabhan

References in corpus (15)

• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• UV Luminosity Functions at redshifts z~4 to z~10: 10000 Galaxies from HST Legacy Fields
• Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis Version 2.1: construction, observational verification and new results
• A New Calculation of the Ionizing Background Spectrum and the Effects of HeII Reionization
• Model-independent evidence in favor of an end to reionization by z~6
• Evidence of patchy hydrogen reionization from an extreme Ly$\alpha$ trough below redshift six
• Observations of the Lyman-$\alpha$ Universe
• Inside-out or Outside-in: The topology of reionization in the photon-starved regime suggested by Lyman-alpha forest data
• New Constraints on the Faint-end of the UV Luminosity Function at z~7-8 using the Gravitational Lensing of the Hubble Frontier Fields Cluster A2744
• The Dependence of Theoretical Synthetic Spectra on $\alpha$-enhancement in Young, Binary Stellar Populations
• Ruling out 3 keV warm dark matter using 21 cm-EDGES data
• Exploring the epoch of hydrogen reionization using FRBs
• Nonlinear Bias of Cosmological Halo Formation in the Early Universe
• Warm Dark Matter and Cosmic Reionization
• Assuming Ionization Equilibrium and the Impact on the Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest Power Spectrum during the End of Reionization at $8\ge z\ge 5$