Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 477, Issue 4, Pages 5501-5516Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty968
Keywords
methods: numerical; galaxies: high-redshift; intergalactic medium; quasars; absorption lines; dark ages; reionization; first stars
Categories
Funding
- CITA postdoctoral fellowship
- Isaac Newton studentship
- Cambridge Trust
- STFC
- FP7 ERC Advanced Grant [Emergence-320596]
- Kavli Foundation
- BIS National E-infrastructure capital grant [ST/K001590/1]
- STFC [ST/H008861/1, ST/H00887X/1]
- STFC DiRAC Operations grant [ST/K00333X/1]
- Munich Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics (MIAPP) of the DFG cluster of excellence 'Origin and Structure of the Universe'
- STFC [ST/K001590/1, ST/P000673/1, ST/H00887X/1, ST/K00333X/1, ST/L000636/1, ST/H008861/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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The thermal state of the post-reionization IGM is sensitive to the timing of reionization and the nature of the ionizing sources. We have modelled here the thermal state of the IGM in cosmological radiative transfer simulations of a realistic, extended, spatially inhomogeneous hydrogen reionization process, carefully calibrated with Ly alpha forest data. We compare these with cosmological simulations run using a spatially homogeneous ionizing background. The simulations with a realistic growth of ionized regions and a realistic spread in reionization redshifts show, as expected, significant spatial fluctuations in the temperature-density relation (TDR) of the post-reionization IGM. The most recently ionized regions are hottest and exhibit a flatter TDR. In simulations consistent with the average TDR inferred from Ly alpha forest data, these spatial fluctuations have a moderate but noticeable effect on the statistical properties of the Ly alpha opacity of the IGM at z similar to 4-6. This should be taken into account in accurate measurements of the thermal properties of the IGM and the free-streaming of dark matter from Ly alpha forest data in this redshift range. The spatial variations of the TDR predicted by our simulations are, however, smaller by about a factor of 2 than would be necessary to explain the observed large spatial opacity fluctuations on large (>= 50 h(-1) comoving Mpc) scales at z greater than or similar to 5.5.
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