Comparison of reionization models: radiative transfer simulations and approximate, seminumeric models

By Oliver Zahn, A. Mesinger, M. McQuinn, Hy Trac, Renyue Cen, L. Hernquist. 2010

177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We compare the predictions of four different algorithms for the distribution of ionized gas during the Epoch of Reionization. These algorithms are all used to run a 100 Mpc h−1 simulation of reionization with the same initial conditions. Two of the algorithms are state-of-the-art ray-tracing radiative transfer codes that use disparate methods to calculate the ionization history. The other two algorithms are fast but more approximate schemes based on iterative applications of a smoothing filter on the underlying source and density fields. We compare these algorithms' resulting ionization and 21-cm fields using several different statistical measures. The two radiative transfer schemes are in excellent agreement judging by the power spectra of both the ionization fields and the 21-cm emission fields (agreeing to better than 10 per cent) and are in good agreement with the analytic schemes (better than 50 per cent) over the range of ionized fractions and wavevectors we compare ( Mpc−1). This agreement suggests that the different approximations involved in the ray-tracing algorithms are sensible and that seminumerical schemes provide a numerically inexpensive, yet fairly accurate, description of the reionization process.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7908e26570a9561bd140e8d29ff95f65ff358dd2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Molecular Biology

1. A. Mesinger
2. E. Sobacchi

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. J. Pritchard
2. Abraham Loeb
3. A. Mesinger
4. M. Dijkstra
5. A. Ferrara
6. E. Sobacchi
7. L. Pentericci
8. E. Vanzella

In Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine

1. A. Mesinger
2. A. Ferrara

Citations in the corpus

• Inhomogeneous recombinations during cosmic reionization (2014, methodology): “…radiative transfer simulations (e.g. McQuinn et al. 2007; Zahn et al. 2011; Friedrich et al. 2011) predict a relatively flat or mildly decreasing power spectrum in the relevant range k ∼ 0.1 → 0.3, during the late stages of reionization, consistent with our nRnF model (c.f. Zahn et al. 2011).”
• 21 cm cosmology in the 21st century (2011, background): “The distribution of bubbles sizes found from this analytic calculation has been shown to be a good match to numerical reionization simulations at the same neutral fraction [108, 109].”
• Can the intergalactic medium cause a rapid drop in Lyα emission at z > 6? (2014, methodology): “The 5 http://homepage.sns.it/mesinger/Sim semi-numerical approach combines excursion set and perturbation formalisms to generate various cosmic fields, and has been extensively tested against numerical simulations (Mesinger & Furlanetto 2007; Mesinger et al. 2011; Zahn et al. 2011).”
• THE BIRTH OF A GALAXY: PRIMORDIAL METAL ENRICHMENT AND STELLAR POPULATIONS (2010, result): “At the final redshift, the volume and mass ionized fraction are 0.76 and 0.72, respectively, which are consistent with largescale reionization simulations (Zahn et al. 2011).”
• Model-independent evidence in favour of an end to reionization by z ≈ 6 (2014, background): “This problem is exacerbated by the expectation that reionization is very inhomogeneous on large-scales (e.g. Furlanetto et al. 2004; Zahn et al. 2011).”
• The birth of a galaxy – III. Propelling reionization with the faintest galaxies (2014, background): “…culminating in a fully ionized Universe by z ∼ 6 (e.g. Gnedin & Ostriker 1997; Razoumov et al. 2002; Ciardi, Ferrara & White 2003; Sokasian et al. 2003; Furlanetto, Zaldarriaga & Hernquist 2004; Iliev et al. 2006; Robertson et al. 2010; Trac & Gnedin 2011; Zahn et al. 2011; So et al. 2014).”