Cosmological Reionization by the First Stars in the H_2-Dissociating Background

摘要

As the first luminous astrophysical objects in the universe formed, hydrogen-ionizing photons from these objects created individual H II bubbles. This ended the cosmic dark ages and opened the epoch of cosmic reionization. The percolating H II bubbles grew in size as more and more sources were created, until they all merged and fully ionized the universe. This process has been studied extensively by numerical simulations, which usually involve independent calculation of both structure formation and radiative trans-fer.