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.
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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 |
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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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