Primordial helium recombination I: feedback, line transfer, and continuum opacity

Abstract

Precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropy on scales $\ell >500$ will be available in the near future. Successful interpretation of these data is dependent on a detailed understanding of the damping tail and cosmological recombination of both hydrogen and helium. This paper and two companion papers are devoted to a precise calculation of helium recombination. We discuss several aspects of the standard recombination picture, and then include feedback, radiative transfer in HeI lines with partial redistribution, and continuum opacity from HI photoionization. In agreement with past calculations, we find that HeII recombination proceeds in Saha equilibrium, whereas HeI recombination is delayed relative to Saha due to the low rates connecting excited states of HeI to the ground state. However, we find that at $z<2200$ the continuum absorption by the rapidly increasing HI population becomes effective at destroying photons in the HeI $2^1{P}^o-1^{1}S$ line, causing HeI recombination to finish around $z\approx 1800$, much earlier than previously estimated.

30 pages, 13 figures, to be submitted to PRD

References in corpus (47)

• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Three Year Results: Implications for Cosmology
• Cosmological parameters from SDSS and WMAP
• First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Implications for Inflation
• A measurement by BOOMERANG of multiple peaks in the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background
• DASI First Results: A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Angular Power Spectrum
• A New Calculation of the Recombination Epoch
• Cosmology from Maxima-1, Boomerang and COBE/DMR CMB Observations
• How exactly did the Universe become neutral?
• First Estimations of Cosmological Parameters From BOOMERANG
• High Resolution Observations of the CMB Power Spectrum with ACBAR
• The Physics of Microwave Background Anisotropies
• Detecting Dark Matter Annihilation with CMB Polarization : Signatures and Experimental Prospects
• Cosmological Parameter Extraction from the First Season of Observations with DASI
• The Anisotropy of the Microwave Background to l = 3500: Mosaic Observations with the Cosmic Background Imager
• Cosmological implications of the MAXIMA-I high resolution Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy measurement
• Wouthuysen-Field coupling strength and application to high-redshift 21 cm radiation
• The Spin-Kinetic Temperature Coupling and the Heating Rate due to Lyman Alpha Scattering before Reionization: Predictions for 21cm Emission and Absorption
• The Effect of Physical Assumptions on the Calculation of Microwave Background Anisotropies
• Monte Carlo Simulation of Lyman Alpha Scattering and Application to Damped Lyman Alpha Systems
• Cosmic microwave background measurements can discriminate among inflation models
• Impact of dark matter decays and annihilations on reionization
• The Chemistry of the Early Universe
• The Damping Tail of CMB Anisotropies
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope
• Induced two-photon decay of the 2s level and the rate of cosmological hydrogen recombination
• Looking for a varying $\alpha$ in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Cosmic concordance and the fine structure constant
• Delayed Recombination
• Decaying particles and the reionization history of the Universe
• Cosmological hydrogen recombination: populations of the high level sub-states
• The Time Development of a Resonance Line in the Expanding Universe
• The Cosmic Microwave Background and the Ionization History of the Universe
• The effect of forbidden transitions on cosmological hydrogen and helium recombination
• Two-Photon 2s<->1s Transitions during Recombination of Hydrogen in the Universe
• Rapid HeII->HeI recombination and radiation concerned with this process
• Background radiation from sterile neutrino decay and reionization
• Generation of Magnetic Field in the Pre-recombination Era
• Cosmological hydrogen recombination: Lyn line feedback and continuum escape
• Is there a need and another way to measure the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature more accurately?
• A VSA search for the extended Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect in the Corona Borealis Supercluster
• Frequentist Estimation of Cosmological Parameters from the MAXIMA-1 Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy Data
• Ionizing radiation from hydrogen recombination strongly suppresses the lithium scattering signature in the CMB
• Mapping of the SZ effect in the cluster Cl 0016+16 with the Ryle Telescope
• Linear effects of perturbed recombination
• Recombination Induced Softening and Reheating of the Cosmic Plasma
• Constraints from the damping tail
• On the coupling between different species during recombination

Cited by in corpus (63)

• Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
• Seven-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Planck 2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters
• CMB power spectrum parameter degeneracies in the era of precision cosmology
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cosmological Parameters from the 2008 Power Spectra
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cosmological parameters from three seasons of data
• HyRec: A fast and highly accurate primordial hydrogen and helium recombination code
• Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters
• The Dawn of Chemistry
• Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Cosmological Parameters
• Towards a complete treatment of the cosmological recombination problem
• Ultrafast effective multi-level atom method for primordial hydrogen recombination
• Could the Cosmological Recombination Spectrum Help Us Understand Annihilating Dark Matter?
• Improved He I Emissivities in the Case B Approximation
• New constraints on time-dependent variations of fundamental constants using Planck data
• Signals From the Epoch of Cosmological Recombination
• CMB and BBN constraints on evaporating primordial black holes revisited
• Recombinations to the Rydberg States of Hydrogen and Their Effect During the Cosmological Recombination Epoch
• A new light on 21 cm intensity fluctuations from the dark ages
• Estimating the impact of recombination uncertainties on the cosmological parameter constraints from cosmic microwave background experiments
• Two-photon transitions in primordial hydrogen recombination
• Cosmological hydrogen recombination: The effect of extremely high-n states
• On the detection of spectral ripples from the Recombination Epoch
• CosmoSpec: Fast and detailed computation of the cosmological recombination radiation from hydrogen and helium
• HYREC-2: a highly accurate sub-millisecond recombination code
• Rico: An Accurate Cosmological Recombination Code
• Probing the Effective Number of Neutrino Species with Cosmic Microwave Background
• Primordial helium recombination III: Thomson scattering, isotope shifts, and cumulative results
• Lyman-alpha transfer in primordial hydrogen recombination
• Precise cosmological parameter estimation using CosmoRec
• CMB anisotropy and BBN constraints on pre-recombination decay of dark matter to visible particles
• Axi-Higgs Cosmology
• Power law cosmology model comparison with CMB scale information
• Cosmological Hydrogen Recombination: influence of resonance and electron scattering
• Primordial Helium Abundance from CMB: a constraint from recent observations and a forecast
• Cosmological recombination: feedback of helium photons and its effect on the recombination spectrum
• Time-Dependent Corrections to the Ly-alpha Escape Probability During Cosmological Hydrogen Recombination
• Uncertainties in Theoretical HeI Emissivities: HII Regions, Primordial Abundance, and Cosmological Recombination
• Using the cosmological recombination radiation to probe early dark energy and fundamental constant variations
• Tickling the CMB damping tail: scrutinizing the tension between the ACT and SPT experiments
• Constraining galactic structures of mirror dark matter
• WMAP 5-year constraints on time variation of $\alpha$ and $m_e$ in a detailed recombination scenario
• Radiative transfer effects during primordial helium recombination
• Physics of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy
• Effective conductance method for the primordial recombination spectrum
• Delayed Recombination and Cosmic Parameters
• Radiative transfer effects in primordial hydrogen recombination
• Ly alpha escape during cosmological hydrogen recombination: the 3d-1s and 3s-1s two-photon processes
• Sensitivity forecasts for the cosmological recombination radiation in the presence of foregrounds
• Perturbed Recombination from Dark Matter Annihilation
• Effect of Radiative Feedbacks for Resonant Transitions during Cosmological Recombination
• Molecular hydrogen in the cosmic recombination epoch
• Reionization in the dark and the light from Cosmic Microwave Background
• Long-range interactions of hydrogen atoms in excited states. III. nS-1S interactions for n >= 3
• Separation of Transitions with Two Quantum Jumps from Cascades
• Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy numerical solution (CMBAns) I: An introduction to $C_l$ calculation
• Advanced Three Level Approximation for Numerical Treatment of Cosmological Recombination
• High frequency background gravitational waves from spontaneous emission of gravitons by hydrogen and helium
• Cosmology with Recombination Spectrum
• Hydrogen Recombination with Multilevel atoms
• The Thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect of Primordial Recombination Radiation
• Metals at the surface of last scatter
• Probing small-scale baryon and dark matter isocurvature perturbations with cosmic microwave background anisotropies