The Hydrodynamic Feedback of Cosmic Reionization on Small-Scale Structures and Its Impact on Photon Consumption during the Epoch of Reionization

TL;DR

This study uses advanced radiation-hydrodynamics simulations to quantify how small-scale structures in the intergalactic medium increase recombination rates, significantly impacting the photon budget needed for cosmic reionization.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed quantification of small-scale density structures' hydrodynamic feedback on reionization using high-resolution simulations resolving minihalos.

Findings

High clumping factors (>10) boost recombination rates during reionization.

Small-scale structures can add more than one recombination per hydrogen atom.

Recombination rate depends on ionizing intensity, redshift, and density contrast.

Abstract

Density inhomogeneity in the intergalactic medium (IGM) can boost the recombination rate of ionized gas substantially, affecting the growth of HII regions during reionization. Previous attempts to quantify this effect typically failed to resolve down to the Jeans scale in the pre-ionization IGM, which is important in establishing this effect, along with the hydrodynamical back-reaction of reionization on it. Towards that end, we perform a set of fully-coupled, radiation-hydrodynamics simulations from cosmological initial conditions, extending the mass resolution of previous work to the scale of minihalos. Pre-reionization structure is evolved until a redshift $z_i$ at which the ionizing radiation from external sources arrives to sweep an R-type ionization front supersonically across the volume in a few Myr, until it is trapped on the surfaces of minihalos and converted to D-type, after which the minihalo gas is removed by photoevaporative winds. Small-scale density structures during this time lead to a high ($>$10) clumping factor for ionized gas, which hugely boosts the recombination rate until the structures are disrupted by the hydrodynamic feedback after $\sim 10-100~\rm{Myr}$. For incoming stellar radiation with intensity $J_{21}$ in a $200~h^{-1}~\rm{kpc}$ box with the mean density contrast $\bar\delta$, the number of extra recombinations per H atom, on top of what is expected from homogeneously distributed gas, is given by $0.32[J_{21}]^{0.12}[(1+z_i)/11]^{-1.7}[1+\bar\delta]^{2.5}$. In models in which most of the volume is ionized toward the end of reionization, this can add more than one recombination per H atom to the ionizing photon budget to achieve reionization.