Journal article
Constraining reionization using 21-cm observations in combination with CMB and Lyα forest data
JR Pritchard, A Loeb, JSB Wyithe
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Published : 2010
Abstract
In this paper, we explore the constraints on the reionization history that are provided by current observations of the Lyα forest and the cosmic microwave background. Rather than using a particular semi-analytic model, we take the novel approach of parametrizing the ionizing sources with arbitrary functions and perform likelihood analyses to constrain possible reionization histories. We find model-independent conclusions that reionization is likely to be mostly complete by z= 8 and that the intergalactic medium was 50 per cent ionized at z= 9-10. Upcoming low-frequency observations of the redshifted 21-cm line of neutral hydrogen are expected to place significantly better constraints on the ..
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Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
JRP would like to thank Jamie Bolton, Claude-Andre Faucher-Giguere, Steven Furlanetto and Adam Lidz for comments on an earlier draft and MPA for their hospitality where part of this work was completed. JRP is supported by NASA through the Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF-01211.01-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS 5-26555. AL acknowledges funding from the NSF grant AST-0907890 and from the NASA Lunar Science Institute (via Cooperative Agreement NNA09DB30A). JSBW is supported by the Australian Research Council.