Introducing SPHINX-MHD: The Impact of Primordial Magnetic Fields on the First Galaxies, Reionization, and the Global 21cm Signal

TL;DR

This paper introduces SPHINX-MHD, a novel simulation suite that models the effects of primordial magnetic fields on early galaxy formation, reionization, and the 21cm signal, revealing constraints and observational implications.

Contribution

First cosmological radiation-magnetohydrodynamics simulations incorporating multi-frequency radiation transfer and constrained transport MHD to study primordial magnetic fields during reionization.

Findings

PMFs with certain spectral indices are inconsistent with CMB constraints.

Strong PMFs can slightly increase LyC photon escape and reduce galaxy sizes.

Global 21cm signal features are sensitive to PMF properties.

Abstract

We present the first results from SPHINX-MHD, a suite of cosmological radiation-magnetohydrodynamics simulations designed to study the impact of primordial magnetic fields (PMFs) on galaxy formation and the evolution of the intergalactic medium during the epoch of reionization. The simulations are among the first to employ multi-frequency, on-the-fly radiation transfer and constrained transport ideal MHD in a cosmological context to simultaneously model the inhomogeneous process of reionization as well as the growth of PMFs. We run a series of $(5\,\text{cMpc})^3$ cosmological volumes, varying both the strength of the seed magnetic field ($B_0$) and its spectral index ($n_B$). We find that PMFs that have $n_B > -0.562\log_{10}\left(\frac{B_0}{1{\rm n}G}\right) - 3.35$ produce electron optical depths ($\tau_e$) that are inconsistent with CMB constraints due to the unrealistically early collapse of low-mass dwarf galaxies. For $n_B\geq-2.9$, our constraints are considerably tighter than the $\sim{\rm n}G$ constraints from Planck. PMFs that do not satisfy our constraints have little impact on the reionization history or the shape of the UV luminosity function. Likewise, detecting changes in the Lya forest due to PMFs will be challenging because photoionisation and photoheating efficiently smooth the density field. However, we find that the first absorption feature in the global 21cm signal is a sensitive indicator of the properties of the PMFs, even for those that satisfy our $\tau_e$ constraint. Furthermore, strong PMFs can marginally increase the escape of LyC photons by up to 25\% and shrink the effective radii of galaxies by $\sim44\%$ which could increase the completeness fraction of galaxy surveys. Finally, our simulations show that surveys with a magnitude limit of ${\rm M_{UV,1500}=-13}$ can probe the sources that provide the majority of photons for reionization out to $z=12$.