No Arabic abstract
The hyperfine transition of $^3$He$^+$ at 3.5cm has been thought as a probe of the high-z IGM since it offers a unique insight into the evolution of the helium component of the gas, as well as potentially give an independent constraint on the 21cm signal from neutral hydrogen. In this paper, we use radiative transfer simulations of reionization driven by sources such as stars, X-ray binaries, accreting black holes and shock heated interstellar medium, and simulations of a high-z quasar to characterize the signal and analyze its prospects of detection. We find that the peak of the signal lies in the range 1-50 $mu$K for both environments, but while around the quasar it is always in emission, in the case of cosmic reionization a brief period of absorption is expected. As the evolution of HeII is determined by stars, we find that it is not possible to distinguish reionization histories driven by more energetic sources. On the other hand, while a bright QSO produces a signal in 21cm that is very similar to the one from a large collection of galaxies, its signature in 3.5cm is very peculiar and could be a powerful probe to identify the presence of the QSO. We analyze the prospects of the signals detectability using SKA1-mid as our reference telescope. We find that the noise power spectrum dominates over the power spectrum of the signal, although a modest S/N ratio can be obtained when the wavenumber bin width and the survey volume are sufficiently large.
In this paper we examine the effect of X-ray and Lyalpha photons on the intergalactic medium temperature. We calculate the photon production from a population of stars and micro-quasars in a set of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations which self-consistently follow the dark matter dynamics, radiative processes as well as star formation, black hole growth and associated feedback processes. We find that, (i) IGM heating is always dominated by X-rays unless the Lyalpha photon contribution from stars in objects with mass M<10^8 Msun becomes significantly enhanced with respect to the X-ray contribution from BHs in the same halo (which we do not directly model). (ii) Without overproducing the unresolved X-ray background, the gas temperature becomes larger than the CMB temperature, and thus an associated 21 cm signal should be expected in emission, at z<11.5. We discuss how in such a scenario the transition redshift between a 21 cm signal in absorption and in emission could be used to constraint BHs accretion and associated feedback processes.
We analyze the association of galaxies to Lya and OVI absorption, the most commonly detected transitions in the low-z intergalactic medium (IGM), in the fields of 14 quasars with z_em = 0.06-0.57. Confirming previous studies, we observe a high covering fraction for Lya absorption to impact parameter rho = 300kpc: 33/37 of our L>0.01L* galaxies show Lya equivalent width W_Lya>50mA. Galaxies of all luminosity L>0.01L* and spectral type are surrounded by a diffuse and ionized circumgalactic medium (CGM), whose baryonic mass is estimated at ~10^(10.5 +/- 0.3) Msun for a constant N_H. The virialized halos and extended CGM of present-day galaxies are responsible for most strong Lya absorbers (W_Lya > 300mA) but cannot reproduce the majority of observed lines in the Lya forest. We conclude that the majority of Lya absorption with W_Lya=30-300mA occurs in the cosmic web predicted by cosmological simulations and estimate a characteristic width for these filaments of ~400kpc. Regarding OVI, we observe a near unity covering fraction to rho=200kpc for L>0.1L* galaxies and to rho = 300kpc for sub-L* (0.1 L*<L<L*) galaxies. Similar to our Lya results, stronger OVI systems (W_OVI > 70mA) arise in the virialized halos of L>0.1L* galaxies. Unlike Lya, the weaker OVI systems (W_OVI~30mA) arise in the extended CGM of sub-L* galaxies. The majority of OVI gas observed in the low-z IGM is associated with a diffuse medium surrounding individual galaxies with L~0.3L*, and rarely originates in the so-called warm-hot IGM (WHIM) predicted by cosmological simulations.
The first supernovae will soon be visible at the edge of the observable universe, revealing the birthplaces of Population III stars. With upcoming near-infrared missions, a broad analysis of the detectability of high-$z$ supernovae is paramount. We combine cosmological and radiation transport simulations, instrument specifications, and survey strategies to create synthetic observations of primeval core-collapse, Type IIn and pair-instability supernovae with the James Webb Space Telescope ($JWST$). We show that a dedicated observational campaign with the $JWST$ can detect up to $sim 15$ pair-instability explosions, $sim 300$ core-collapse supernovae, but less than one Type IIn explosion per year, depending on the Population III star formation history. Our synthetic survey also shows that $approx 1-2 times10^2$ supernovae detections, depending on the accuracy of the classification, are sufficient to discriminate between a Salpeter and flat mass distribution for high redshift stars with a confidence level greater than 99.5 per cent. We discuss how the purity of the sample affects our results and how supervised learning methods may help to discriminate between CC and PI SNe.
We have measured redshifts for 243 z ~3 quasars in nine VLT VIMOS LBG redshift survey areas, each of which is centred on a known bright quasar. Using spectra of these quasars, we measure the cross-correlation between neutral hydrogen gas causing the Lya forest and 1020 Lyman-break galaxies at z ~3. We find an increase in neutral hydrogen absorption within 5 h^-1 Mpc of a galaxy in agreement with the results of Adelberger et al. (2003, 2005). The Lya-LBG cross-correlation can be described by a power-law on scales larger than 3 h^-1 Mpc. When galaxy velocity dispersions are taken into account our results at smaller scales (<2 h^-1 Mpc) are also in good agreement with the results of Adelberger et al. (2005). There is little immediate indication of a region with a transmission spike above the mean IGM value which might indicate the presence of star-formation feedback. To measure the galaxy velocity dispersions, which include both intrinsic LBG velocity dispersion and redshift errors, we have used the LBG-LBG redshift space distortion measurements of Bielby et al. (2010). We find that the redshift-space transmission spike implied in the results of Adelberger et al. (2003) is too narrow to be physical in the presence of the likely LBG velocity dispersion and is likely to be a statistical fluke. Nevertheless, neither our nor previous data can rule out the presence of a narrow, real-space transmission spike, given the evidence of the increased Lya absorption surrounding LBGs which can mask the spikes presence when convolved with a realistic LBG velocity dispersion. Finally, we identify 176 CIV systems in the quasar spectra and find an LBG-CIV correlation strength on scales of 10 h^-1 Mpc consistent with the relation measured at ~Mpc scales.
On the basis of the perturbation theory in the fine structure constant $alpha$ and the ratio of the electron to muon masses we calculate one-loop vacuum polarization and electron vertex corrections and the nuclear structure corrections to the hyperfine splitting of the ground state of muonic helium atom $(mu e ^3_2He)$. We obtain total result for the ground state hyperfine splitting $Delta u^{hfs}=4166.471$ MHz which improves the previous calculation of Lakdawala and Mohr due to the account of new corrections of orders $alpha^5$ and $alpha^6$. The remaining difference between our theoretical result and experimental value of the hyperfine splitting lies in the range of theoretical and experimental errors and requires the subsequent investigation of higher order corrections.