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A tale of seven narrow spikes and a long trough: constraining the timing of the percolation of H II bubbles at the tail end of reionization with ULAS J1120+0641

Chardin, J; Haehnelt, MG; Bosman, SEI; Puchwein, E; (2018) A tale of seven narrow spikes and a long trough: constraining the timing of the percolation of H II bubbles at the tail end of reionization with ULAS J1120+0641. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , 473 (1) pp. 765-775. 10.1093/mnras/stx2362. Green open access

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Abstract

High signal-to-noise observations of the Ly α forest transmissivity in the z = 7.085 quasi-stellar object (QSO) ULAS J1120+0641 show seven narrow transmission spikes followed by a long 240 cMpc h^{−1} trough. Here, we use radiative transfer simulations of cosmic reionization previously calibrated to match a wider range of Ly α forest data to show that the occurrence of seven transmission spikes in the narrow redshift range z = 5.85–6.1 is very sensitive to the exact timing of reionization. Occurrence of the spikes requires the most underdense regions of the intergalactic medium to be already fully ionized. The rapid onset of a long trough at z = 6.12 requires a strong decrease of the photoionization rate Γ at z ≳ 6.1 in this line of sight, consistent with the end of percolation at this redshift. The narrow range of reionization histories that we previously found to be consistent with a wider range of Ly α forest data have a reasonable probability of showing seven spikes and the mock absorption spectra provide an excellent match to the spikes and the trough in the observed spectrum of ULAS J1120+0641. Larger samples of high signal-to-noise searches for rare Ly α transmission spikes at z > 5.8 should therefore provide important further insights into the exact timing of the percolation of H II bubbles at the tail end of reionization.

Type: Article
Title: A tale of seven narrow spikes and a long trough: constraining the timing of the percolation of H II bubbles at the tail end of reionization with ULAS J1120+0641
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx2362
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2362
Language: English
Additional information: This is the published version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: methods: numerical , Galaxy: evolution, quasars: general, diffuse radiation, cosmology: theory
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10037858
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