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Probing the end of reionization with the near zones of z ≳ 6 QSOs

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Keating, LC 
Haehnelt, MG 
Cantalupo, S 
Puchwein, E 

Abstract

QSO near-zones are an important probe of the the ionization state of the IGM at z ~ 6-7, at the end of reionization. We present here high-resolution cosmological 3D radiative transfer simulations of QSO environments for a wide range of host halo masses, 1010−12.5 M_sun. Our simulated near-zones reproduce both the overall decrease of observed near-zone sizes at 6 < z < 7 and their scatter. The observable near-zone properties in our simulations depend only very weakly on the mass of the host halo. The size of the H II region expanding into the IGM is generally limited by (super-)Lyman Limit systems loosely associated with (low-mass) dark matter haloes. This leads to a strong dependence of near-zone size on direction and drives the large observed scatter. In the simulation centred on our most massive host halo, many sightlines show strong red damping wings even for initial volume averaged neutral hydrogen fractions as low as ~ 10−3. For QSO lifetimes long enough to allow growth of the central supermassive black hole while optically bright, we can reproduce the observed near-zone of ULAS J1120+0641 only with an IGM that is initially neutral. Our results suggest that larger samples of z > 7 QSOs will provide important constraints on the evolution of the neutral hydrogen fraction and thus on how late reionization ends.

Description

Keywords

galaxies: high-redshift, intergalactic medium, quasars: absorption lines, dark ages, reionization, first stars

Journal Title

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0035-8711
1365-2966

Volume Title

454

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)
Sponsorship
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/J005673/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/K000985/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/K00333X/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/M00418X/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/M007065/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/H008861/1)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/K001590/1)
STFC (ST/M007073/1)
We would like to thank Jamie Bolton for his detailed and helpful comments on a draft of this manuscript. We also thank Volker Springel for making GADGET-3 available. We are also grateful to Simon White for granting access to Millennium Simulation data. The plots presented in Fig. 1 use the cube helix colour scheme introduced by Green (2011). This work used the DiRAC Data Analytic system at the University of Cambridge, operated by the University of Cambridge High Performance Computing Service on behalf of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility (www.dirac.ac.uk). This equipment was funded by BIS National E-infrastructure capital grant (ST/K001590/1), STFC capital grants ST/H008861/1 and ST/H00887X/1, and STFC DiRAC Operations grant ST/K00333X/1. This work also used the DiRAC Data Centric system at Durham University, operated by the Institute for Computational Cosmology on behalf of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility (www.dirac.ac.uk). This equipment was funded by BIS National E-infrastructure capital grant ST/K00042X/1, STFC capital grants ST/H008519/1 and ST/K00087X/1, STFC DiRAC Operations grant MNRAS 454, 681–697 (2015) at University of Cambridge on September 12, 2016 http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from 694 L. C. Keating et al. ST/K003267/1 and Durham University. DiRAC is part of the National E-Infrastructure. LCK acknowledges the support of an Isaac Newton Studentship, the Cambridge Trust and STFC. Support by the FP7 ERC Advanced Grant Emergence-320596 is gratefully acknowledged.