In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe

By R. Barkana, Abraham Loeb. 2000

1,030 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The formation of the first stars and quasars marks the transformation of the universe from its smooth initial state to its clumpy current state. In popular cosmological models, the first sources of light began to form at a redshift z =30 and reionized most of the hydrogen in the universe by z =7. Current observations are at the threshold of probing the hydrogen reionization epoch. The study of high-redshift sources is likely to attract major attention in observational and theoretical cosmology over the next decade.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/945602f007f0772c0b9d6c20c7526009c6ff9f9e

How researchers see this paper

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

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

21 cm cosmology in the 21st century (2011, methodology): “This model for xi is motivated by a picture of H II regions expanding into neutral hydrogen [46].”
IONIZING PHOTON ESCAPE FRACTIONS FROM HIGH-REDSHIFT DWARF GALAXIES (2008, background): “In the relevant redshift range for cosmological reionization, z = 6 − 15, most of the ionizing radiation due to stars comes from dwarf galaxies of M ≤ 108−9 M⊙ in the standard cold dark matter model (Barkana & Loeb 2001).”
The First Stars (2003, background): “…the big bang, when the CMB photons shifted into the infrared, and the formation of the first sources of light, the universe would have appeared completely dark to a human observer (see Barkana & Loeb 2001, Loeb & Barkana 2001, Miralda-Escudé 2003 for comprehensive reviews of this cosmic epoch).”
The rates and modes of gas accretion on to galaxies and their gaseous haloes (2010, background): “For the gas accreted in the hot mode, which includes most of the gas accreting on to high-mass haloes, the maximum past temperature is within a factor of ≈3 of the virial 3 This definition is a factor of 2/3 lower than the virial temperature used by some other authors (e.g. Barkana & Loeb 2001).”
The Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium (2015, background): “The first galaxies formed later in halos with masses of & 108M , halos that could cool by more robust atomic transitions and that formed in abundance around z ∼ 10 (Barkana & Loeb 2001; Bromm & Yoshida 2011).”
Formation of z~6 Quasars from Hierarchical Galaxy Mergers (2006, background): “…for structure formation, assumes that structure grows from weak density fluctuations amplified by gravity, with small objects collapsing first and subsequentlymerging to form progressively more massive ones, a process known as ‘‘hierarchical assembly’’ (for a review see, e.g., Barkana & Loeb 2001).”
A Method for Separating the Physics from the Astrophysics of High-Redshift 21 Centimeter Fluctuations (2004, background): “Hundreds of millions of years later, the first galaxies began to reionize the cosmic gas (Barkana & Loeb 2001).”
Observational Constraints on Cosmic Reionization (2006, background): “3 Cosmic reionization has been discussed within the larger context of mostly theoretical reviews on the formation of the first luminous objects (Loeb & Barkana 2002; Barkana & Loeb 2001; Ciardi & Ferrara 2005).”
Feedback and the fundamental line of low-luminosity low-surface-brightness/dwarf galaxies (2002, background): “(iv) A sharp lower bound for haloes that can form galaxies, at V 10 km s−1, arises from the sharp drop in the cooling rate below T 104 K, where, in the absence of metals, it relies on molecular hydrogen (see Barkana & Loeb 2001, fig.”
Intergalactic Magnetic Fields from Quasar Outflows (2001, methodology): “We embed each quasar in a galactic halo, adopting a simple prescription for the host properties that has been shown to be succesful in describing the observed quasar luminosity function at 2 ∼ z ∼ 5 (see the review by Barkana & Loeb 2001, and references therein).”
Lyα blobs as an observational signature of cold accretion streams into galaxies (2009, background): “Consider a halo of mass Mhalo = 10 12M⊙, for which vcirc = 220 km s−1, Tvir = 1.9 × 106 K, and rvir = 82 kpc (see, e.g. Barkana & Loeb 2001, their Eqs.”
Moving mesh cosmology: tracing cosmological gas accretion (2013, methodology): “To estimate the virial temperature we use the definition of Barkana & Loeb (2001) which at redshift two gives Tvir = µmpV 2 c 2kB ' 4× 105 K ( Mhalo 1011 h−1M )2/3 ( 1 + z 3 ) (1) where Vc is the circular velocity at the virial radius and µ ' 0.6 for fully ionized, primordial gas.”
Ubiquitous seeding of supermassive black holes by direct collapse (2012, positive): “We use the relations from Barkana & Loeb (2001) for the virial temperature, virial radius,Rvir, and circular velocity,Vc, of a halo Tvir = 1.98× 10 4 ( µ 0.6 ) ( Minfall 108h−1M⊙ ) 2 3 × ( Ω0 Ωm(z) ∆c 18π2 ) 1 3 ( 1 + z 10 ) K , (1) Rvir = 0.784 ( Minfall 108h−1M⊙ ) 1 3 ( Ω0 Ωm(z) ∆c 18π2 )−…”
The aftermath of the first stars: massive black holes (2006, background): “…III stars would have radiated at temperatures of ∼ 105 K (e.g. Bond, Arnett & Carr 1984), generating enough ionizing photons to completely ionize the minihaloes in which they were formed and to contribute to the reionization of the Universe (e.g. Barkana & Loeb 2001; Alvarez, Bromm & Shapiro 2006).”
Modeling the Radio Background from the First Black Holes at Cosmic Dawn: Implications for the 21 cm Absorption Amplitude (2018, background): “The redshifted 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen (H I) offers a promising tool for mapping our universe’s “cosmic dawn,” when the first luminous sources formed (see Barkana & Loeb 2001; Furlanetto et al. 2006; Morales & Wyithe 2010; Pritchard & Loeb 2012; McQuinn 2016 for reviews).”