Fast Large-Scale Reionization Simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fast, large-scale simulation method for the Epoch of Reionization that efficiently produces 21cm emission maps without full 3D radiative transfer, aiding upcoming observational studies.

Contribution

The authors develop a computationally efficient approach to simulate reionization, combining dark matter simulations with simplified ionization modeling, validated against detailed radiative transfer results.

Findings

Excellent agreement with 3D radiative transfer simulations.

Generated a continuous redshift cube from 6 to 12.

Analyzed LOFAR observational effects on the reionization signal.

Abstract

We present an efficient method to generate large simulations of the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) without the need for a full 3-dimensional radiative transfer code. Large dark-matter-only simulations are post-processed to produce maps of the redshifted 21cm emission from neutral hydrogen. Dark matter haloes are embedded with sources of radiation whose properties are either based on semi-analytical prescriptions or derived from hydrodynamical simulations. These sources could either be stars or power-law sources with varying spectral indices. Assuming spherical symmetry, ionized bubbles are created around these sources, whose radial ionized fraction and temperature profiles are derived from a catalogue of 1-D radiative transfer experiments. In case of overlap of these spheres, photons are conserved by redistributing them around the connected ionized regions corresponding to the spheres. The efficiency with which these maps are created allows us to span the large parameter space typically encountered in reionization simulations. We compare our results with other, more accurate, 3-D radiative transfer simulations and find excellent agreement for the redshifts and the spatial scales of interest to upcoming 21cm experiments. We generate a contiguous observational cube spanning redshift 6 to 12 and use these simulations to study the differences in the reionization histories between stars and quasars. Finally, the signal is convolved with the LOFAR beam response and its effects are analyzed and quantified. Statistics performed on this mock data set shed light on possible observational strategies for LOFAR.