The morphology of cosmological reionization by means of Minkowski Functionals

Abstract

The morphology of the total gas and the neutral hydrogen (H I) distributions during the cosmological epoch of reionization can be quantified with Minkowski Functionals (MFs) of isodensity surfaces. We compute the MFs from the output of a high-resolution numerical simulation which includes explicit treatment of transfer of UV ionizing radiation. "Galaxies" identified in the simulation using semi-analytic models of galaxy formation are assumed to be the sole sources of UV photons. The MFs of the total gas distribution are well described by the analytic expressions derived for lognormal random fields. The statistical properties of the diffuse H I depend on the gas distribution and on the way ionized regions propagate in the inter-galactic medium (IGM). The deviations of the MFs of the H I distribution from those of a lognormal random field are, therefore, caused by reionization. We use the MFs to discriminate between the various stages of reionization in the simulation. We suggest a simple model of reionization which reproduces the MFs derived from this simulation. Using random realizations of lognormal density fields, we also assess the ability of MFs to distinguish between different reionization scenarios. Our results are relevant to the analysis of future cosmological twenty-one centimeter maps.

12 pages, 8 figures; Minor content changes. To be published in MNRAS

Cited by in corpus (27)

• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• The impact of chemistry on the structure of high-z galaxies
• De-contamination of cosmological 21-cm maps
• Environmental dependence in the ellipsoidal collapse model
• Simulation-Based Inference of Reionization Parameters From 3D Tomographic 21 cm Lightcone Images
• Detection and extraction of signals from the epoch of reionization using higher order one-point statistics
• Measuring the topology of reionization with Betti numbers
• Prospects of constraining reionization model parameters using Minkowski tensors and Betti numbers
• New probe of departures from general relativity using Minkowski functionals
• Probing Modified Gravity Theories with ISW and CMB Lensing
• Radiation-induced large-scale structure during the reionization epoch: the autocorrelation function
• Weakly non-Gaussian formula for the Minkowski functionals in general dimensions
• Probing massive neutrinos with the Minkowski functionals of large-scale structure
• How informative are summaries of the cosmic 21-cm signal?
• The HI-halo mass relation at redshift $z\sim 1$ from the Minkowski functionals of 21 cm intensity maps
• Statistical properties of the linear tidal shear
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: higher-order correlations revealed by germ-grain Minkowski Functionals
• Probing early universe through redshifted 21-cm signal: Modelling and observational challenges
• Persistent topology of the reionization bubble network. II: Evolution & Classification
• Opening Reionization: Quantitative Morphology of the Epoch of Reionization and Its Connection to the Cosmic Density Field
• Studying neutral hydrogen structures during the epoch of reionization using fractal dimensions
• Topology of Reionisation times: concepts, measurements and comparisons to gaussian random field predictions
• Large-scale geometry and topology of gas fields: Effects of AGN and stellar feedback
• The variance of dispersion measure of high-redshift transient objects as a probe of ionized bubble size during reionization
• Reionization Parameter Inference from 3D Minkowski Functionals of the 21 cm Signals
• Morphology of dark matter haloes beyond triaxiality
• Interpreting the HI 21-cm cosmology maps through Largest Cluster Statistics. Part II. Impact of the realistic foreground and instrumental noise on synthetic SKA1-Low observations