Determining the Redshift of Reionization From the Spectra of High-Redshift Sources

Abstract

The redshift at which the universe was reionized is currently unknown. We examine the optimal strategy for extracting this redshift, z_{reion}, from the spectra of early sources. For a source located at a redshift z_s beyond but close to reionization, 1<[(1+z_s)/(1+z_{reion})]<(32/27), the Gunn-Peterson trough splits into disjoint Lyman-alpha, beta, and possibly higher Lyman series troughs, with some transmitted flux in between these troughs. We show that although the transmitted flux is suppressed considerably by the dense Lyman-alpha forest after reionization, it is still detectable for sufficiently bright sources and can be used to infer the reionization redshift. The Next Generation Space Telescope will reach the spectroscopic sensitivity required for the detection of such sources.

13 pages, 4 figures, submitted to ApJ

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• The First Cosmic Structures and their Effects
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• On the Threshold of the Reionization Epoch
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• The Imprint of the Cosmic Dark Ages on the Near Infrared Background
• Effects of a Soft X-ray Background on Structure Formation at High Redshift
• The Earliest Luminous Sources and the Damping Wing of the Gunn-Peterson Trough
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• The Formation of the First Massive Black Holes
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• Constraining the population of 6 < z < 10 star-forming galaxies with deep near-IR images of lensing clusters
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• Modeling the Counts of Faint Radio Loud Quasars: Constraints on the Supermassive Black Hole Population and Predictions for High Redshift
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• Discovery of a new high redshift QSO at z=5.96 with the Subaru telescope
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• Mutual Constraints Between Reionization Models and Parameter Extraction From Cosmic Microwave Background Data
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• Cosmic Reionization and the First Nonlinear Structures in the Universe
• Exploring the cosmic dark ages with the next generation of space and ground-based facilities
• Negative intensity patches in angular variations of CMB as a probe of the period of reionization