Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 514, Issue 1, Pages 55-76Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac1046
Keywords
intergalactic medium; quasars: absorption lines; dark ages; reionization; first stars; large-scale structure of Universe
Categories
Funding
- European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union [740246]
- ERC [INTERSTELLAR H2020/740120]
- ERC under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [638809 -AIDA]
- European Union [885990]
- NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship - Space Telescope Science Institute [HF2-51434]
- NASA [NAS5-26555]
- National Science Foundation [1816006, AST-1751404]
- Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) [CE170100013]
- Australian Research Council [DP190100252]
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) through a China-Chile Joint Research Fund [CCJRF1809]
- ESO programme [1103.A-0817(A)]
- NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant - Space Telescope Science Institute [HST-HF2-51448.001-A]
- Alfred P Sloan Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science
- Brazilian Participation Group
- Carnegie Institution for Science
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Chilean Participation Group
- French Participation Group
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
- Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
- Johns Hopkins University
- Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU)/University of Tokyo
- Korean Participation Group
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Leibniz Institut fur Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP)
- Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie (MPIA Heidelberg)
- Max-Planck-Institut fur Astrophysik (MPA Garching)
- Max-Planck-Institut fur Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE)
- National Astronomical Observatories of China
- New Mexico State University
- New York University
- University of Notre Dame
- Observatorio Nacional/MCTI
- Ohio State University
- Pennsylvania State University
- Shanghai Astronomical Observatory
- United Kingdom Participation Group
- Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
- University of Arizona
- University of Colorado Boulder
- University of Oxford
- University of Portsmouth
- University of Utah
- University of Virginia
- University of Washington
- University of Wisconsin
- Vanderbilt University
- Yale University
- Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) 8th call
- BIS National E-infrastructure capital grant [ST/J005673/1]
- STFC grants [ST/H008586/1, ST/K00333X/1]
- Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
- Division Of Astronomical Sciences
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien [1816006] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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This study uses high signal-to-noise ratio quasar samples to improve measurements of Ly-alpha transmission and finds evidence for fluctuations related to reionization persisting until at least z=5.3, indicating a late end to reionization.
The presence of excess scatter in the Ly-alpha forest at z similar to 5.5, together with the existence of sporadic extended opaque Gunn-Peterson troughs, has started to provide robust evidence for a late end of hydrogen reionization. However, low data quality and systematic uncertainties complicate the use of Ly-alpha transmission as a precision probe of reionization's end stages. In this paper, we assemble a sample of 67 quasar sightlines at z > 5.5 with high signal-to-noise ratios of >10 per <= 15 km s(-1) spectral pixel, relying largely on the new XQR-30 quasar sample. XQR-30 is a large program on VLT/X-Shooter which obtained deep (SNR > 20 per pixel) spectra of 30 quasars at z > 5.7. We carefully account for systematics in continuum reconstruction, instrumentation, and contamination by damped Ly-alpha systems. We present improved measurements of the mean Ly-alpha transmission over 4.9 < z < 6.1. Using all known systematics in a forward modelling analysis, we find excellent agreement between the observed Ly-alpha transmission distributions and the homogeneous-UVB simulations Sherwood and Nyx up to z <= 5.2 (<1 sigma), and mild tension (similar to 2.5 sigma) at z = 5.3. Homogeneous UVB models are ruled out by excess Ly-alpha transmission scatter at z >= 5.4 with high confidence (>3.5 sigma). Our results indicate that reionization-related fluctuations, whether in the UVB, residual neutral hydrogen fraction, and/or IGM temperature, persist in the intergalactic medium until at least z = 5.3 (t = 1.1 Gyr after the big bang). This is further evidence for a late end to reionization.
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