Hydrogen Reionization in the Illustris universe

TL;DR

This study uses hydrodynamical simulations from the Illustris project combined with radiative transfer algorithms to model hydrogen reionization, finding it occurs around redshift 6-7 with results aligning well with Planck data.

Contribution

It applies and compares two radiative transfer methods within the Illustris simulation to model reionization, providing insights into the timing and morphology of the process.

Findings

Reionization completes by redshift ~6.2 in the model.

Optical depth matches Planck 2015 measurements.

Reionization proceeds inside-out with evolving bubble sizes.

Abstract

Hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation such as the Illustris simulations have progressed to a state where they approximately reproduce the observed stellar mass function from high to low redshift. This in principle allows self-consistent models of reionization that exploit the accurate representation of the diffuse gas distribution together with the realistic growth of galaxies provided by these simulations, within a representative cosmological volume. In this work, we apply and compare two radiative transfer algorithms implemented in a GPU-accelerated code to the $106.5\,{\rm Mpc}$ wide volume of Illustris in postprocessing in order to investigate the reionization transition predicted by this model. We find that the first generation of galaxies formed by Illustris is just about able to reionize the universe by redshift $z\sim 7$, provided quite optimistic assumptions about the escape fraction and the resolution limitations are made. Our most optimistic model finds an optical depth of $\tau\simeq 0.065$, which is in very good agreement with recent Planck 2015 determinations. Furthermore, we show that moment-based approaches for radiative transfer with the M1 closure give broadly consistent results with our angular-resolved radiative transfer scheme. In our favoured fiducial model, 20\% of the hydrogen is reionized by redshift $z=9.20$, and this rapidly climbs to 80\% by redshift $z=6.92$. It then takes until $z=6.24$ before 99\% of the hydrogen is ionized. On average, reionization proceeds `inside-out' in our models, with a size distribution of reionized bubbles that progressively features regions of ever larger size while the abundance of small bubbles stays fairly constant.