Recombination Clumping Factor of Physically Defined Intergalactic Medium at the Epoch of Reionization

TL;DR

This study introduces a physically motivated definition of the intergalactic medium's recombination clumping factor during reionization, revealing it to be lower than traditional estimates and impacting ionizing photon budget calculations.

Contribution

It presents a new definition of the IGM based on photon transmission, along with simulations and an analytic model to better estimate the clumping factor during reionization.

Findings

Physically-defined clumping factor is significantly lower than traditional estimates.

Lower clumping factor reduces the ionizing photon budget needed for reionization.

SN feedback has limited impact on the global clumping factor.

Abstract

The recombination clumping factor, $C$, is a key parameter in modeling cosmic reionization, but its value is sensitive to the definition of the Intergalactic Medium (IGM). We investigate the clumping factor using the GAMER adaptive mesh refinement cosmological hydrodynamical simulation code. We introduce a new, physically-motivated definition of the IGM based on the effective transmission factor of ionizing photons. We perform large-scale, full-box simulations with varying intensities of the uniform ultraviolet background, and we find that our physically-defined clumping factor is significantly lower than the values derived from traditional overdensity thresholds. We also introduce an analytic model that distinguishes between the volume-weighted and mass-weighted averages of the neutral fraction, and we find the difference in reionization timing of $\Delta z \sim 2$ depending on the assumed clumping factor and the relation between the volume-weighted and mass-weighted neutral fractions. Our zoom-in simulations further show that, while SN feedback increases the clumping factor locally, the effect is limited to $\sim 100$ kpc scales and does not significantly alter the global clumping factor. The substantially lower clumping factor reduces the required ionizing photon budget, potentially alleviating tension for reionization scenarios driven by rare, bright sources like active galactic nuclei.