Fast large volume simulations of the 21-cm signal from the reionization and pre-reionization epochs

By M. G. Santos, L. Ferramacho, M. Silva, A. Amblard, A. C. C. -. Ist, U. Irvine. 2009

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While limited to low spatial resolution, the next-generation low-frequency radio interferometers that target 21-cm observations during the era of reionization and prior will have instantaneous fields of view that are many tens of deg 2 on the sky. Predictions related to various statistical measurements of the 21-cm brightness temperature must then be pursued with numerical simulations of reionization with correspondingly large volume box sizes, of the order of 1000 Mpc on one side. We pursue a semi-numerical scheme to simulate the 21-cm signal during and prior to reionization by extending a hybrid approach where simulations are performed by first laying down the linear dark matter density field, accounting for the non-linear evolution of the density field based on second-order linear perturbation theory as specified by the Zel'dovich approximation, and then specifying the location and mass of collapsed dark matter haloes using the excursion-set formalism. The location of ionizing sources and the time evolving distribution of ionization field is also specified using an excursion-set algorithm. We account for the brightness temperature evolution through the coupling between spin and gas temperature due to collisions, radiative coupling in the presence of Lyman α photons and heating of the intergalactic medium, such as due to a background of X-ray photons. The hybrid simulation method we present is capable of producing the required large volume simulations with adequate resolution in a reasonable time, so a large number of realizations can be obtained with variations in assumptions related to astrophysics and background cosmology that govern the 21-cm signal.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a6ca82eaa6f6793a3ecff361bb3fe0df15cde47a

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Citations in the corpus

Reionization and the Cosmic Dawn with the Square Kilometre Array (2012, background): “In between are semi-numerical simulations, which are in some sense specific realizations of analytic models, that are capable of simulating large volumes with an acceptable level of resolution (Mesinger et al. 2011; Santos et al. 2010).”
The Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium (2015, background): “…& Ostriker 1997; Ciardi, Stoehr & White 2003; Furlanetto & Oh 2005; Iliev et al. 2006; McQuinn et al. 2007b; Trac & Cen 2007; Finlator et al. 2009; Gnedin 2014a; Thomas et al. 2009; Santos et al. 2010; Mesinger, Furlanetto & Cen 2011; Ciardi et al. 2012; Pawlik, Schaye & Dalla Vecchia 2015).”
A case study of hurdle and generalized additive models in astronomy: the escape of ionizing radiation (2018, background): “…(e.g. Bouwens et al. 2012; Robertson et al. 2013), semi-analytical (e.g. Choudhury, Haehnelt & Regan 2009; Pritchard, Loeb & Wyithe 2010; Santos et al. 2010; Mesinger, Furlanetto & Cen 2011; Shull et al. 2012a; Mitra, Ferrara & Choudhury 2013) as well as simulated (e.g. Iliev et al.…”
Simulating cosmic reionization: how large a volume is large enough? (2013, background): “Previously, reionization at large scales has only been approached by semi-numerical models (Kohler et al. 2007; Santos et al. 2010).”
The First Billion Years project: the escape fraction of ionizing photons in the epoch of reionization (2015, background): “…(e.g. Bouwens et al. 2012; Robertson et al. 2013), semi-analytic modelling of reionisation (e.g. Choudhury et al. 2009; Pritchard et al. 2010; Santos et al. 2010; Mesinger et al. 2011; Raskutti et al. 2012; Mitra et al. 2013; Shull et al. 2012) and numerical simulations of reionisation…”
A PER-BASELINE, DELAY-SPECTRUM TECHNIQUE FOR ACCESSING THE 21 cm COSMIC REIONIZATION SIGNATURE (2012, background): “…as a result of the growing sophistication of numerical and semi-analytic models of how ultraviolet and x-ray sources feed ionization fronts in the intergalactic medium (Furlanetto et al. 2006; Wyithe & Loeb 2004; Santos et al. 2010; Mesinger 2010; Morales & Wyithe 2010; Zahn et al. 2011).”