The impact of helium reionization on the structure of the intergalactic medium

TL;DR

This paper models the effects of helium reionization on the intergalactic medium's structure, revealing temperature changes, velocity flows, and spectral signatures, with implications for matter distribution and absorption features.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled radiative transfer and hydrodynamics simulation of helium reionization, providing detailed predictions of IGM temperature, velocity, and absorption line evolution.

Findings

Temperature-density relation flattens after HeII reionization.

Peculiar velocities increase up to 10 km/s due to pressure effects.

Absorption spectra show broad distribution in HeII/HI ratio.

Abstract

We examine the impact of helium reionization on the structure of the intergalactic medium (IGM). We model the reionization using a radiative transfer (RT) code coupled to the combined gravity hydrodynamics code Enzo. Neutral hydrogen and helium are initially ionized by a starburst spectrum, which is allowed to gradually evolve into a power law spectrum over the redshift interval 3 < z < 4. The temperature-density relation of the gas is found to fan out and flatten following HeII reionization, with an inversion for overdensities above 5. Peculiar velocities of up to 10 km/s are induced by the increased pressure, with the gas density field distorted over large coherent regions by 10-20%, and the dark matter by levels of 1%. The photoionization-induced flows may thus distort the matter power spectrum at comoving wavenumbers k > 0.5 h/Mpc by a few percent by z = 2. Absorption spectra for HI and HeII are drawn from the simulations, and absorption lines are fit to the spectra. A median Doppler parameter of 35 km/s is obtained for the HI absorption systems at z = 3. Dividing into subsamples optically thick and optically thin at line centre reveals that the optically thick systems undergo only mild evolution while the optically thin systems evolve rapidly following HeII reionization. A comparison between HeII and HI absorption features shows a broad distribution in the HeII and HI column density ratio, peaking near the measured value and only slightly narrower than measured. A comparison with approximate simulation methods shows moderately good agreement in the absorption line properties, but not to the precision to which they may be measured.