Reionization: Characteristic Scales, Topology and Observability

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in simulating cosmic reionization, focusing on characteristic scales, topology, and the observability of high-redshift Ly-alpha sources, highlighting new predictions and dependencies on reionization parameters.

Contribution

It presents the first realistic predictions of observational signatures based on large-scale simulations of reionization, emphasizing the importance of characteristic scales and topology.

Findings

Simulations determine characteristic scales of reionization.

Predictions for observability of high-redshift Ly-alpha sources.

Dependence of ionized and neutral patch topology on reionization parameters.

Abstract

Recently the numerical simulations of the process of reionization of the universe at z>6 have made a qualitative leap forward, reaching sufficient sizes and dynamic range to determine the characteristic scales of this process. This allowed making the first realistic predictions for a variety of observational signatures. We discuss recent results from large-scale radiative transfer and structure formation simulations on the observability of high-redshift Ly-alpha sources. We also briefly discuss the dependence of the characteristic scales and topology of the ionized and neutral patches on the reionization parameters.