Abstract
Quasars are the most luminous non-transient sources in the epoch of cosmological reionization (which ended a billion years after the Big Bang, corresponding to a redshift of zāāā5), and are powerful probes of the inter-galactic medium at that time. This review covers current efforts to identify high-redshift quasars and how they have been used to constrain the reionization history. This includes a full description of the various processes by which neutral hydrogen atoms can absorb/scatter ultraviolet photons, and which lead to the Gunn-Peterson effect, dark gap and dark pixel analyses, quasar near zones and damping wing absorption. Finally, the future prospects for using quasars as probes of reionization are described.
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Notes
- 1.
An up-to-date and expanded version of this table in machine-readable form is available from the author.
- 2.
Strictly, it is the flux at Earth which is the relevant quantity but, as can be seen from Fig.ā2, the decrease in flux with redshift across the reionization epoch is considerably smaller than the range of quasar luminosities, so M 1450 is an excellent proxy for the likely utility of any single source.
- 3.
The recently discovered quasars PSOĀ J0226+0302 [30], at zā=ā6.ā53 and unusually bright, and SDSSĀ J0100+2802 [31], at zā=ā6.ā30 and a factor of a few more luminous than any other known HZQ, will presumably be key sources in the future, but as yet have not been subject to full follow-up campaigns.
- 4.
It would be more in keeping with astronomical conventions to give the cross section in terms of wavelength, \( \lambda = c/\nu \); and it is standard in quantum physics to use angular frequency, Ļā=ā2Ļ Ī½, or sometimes energy, Eā=āh Ī½. Frequency is used here it is more directly linked to the physics of the scattering processes than wavelength, while being more commonly used in astronomy than angular frequency. The argument of the cross section Ļ(.ā) is always frequency here.
- 5.
SI units are used here; in cgs units \( \epsilon _{0} = 1/(4\pi ) \) is effectively dimensionless.
- 6.
Here ionizing photons are those with an energy of \( E > 13.6\mbox{ eV} = 2.18 \times 10^{-18}\mbox{ J} \), or a wavelength of Ī»ā<ā0.ā0912āĪ¼m, sufficient to remove a ground state electron from a hydrogen atom.
- 7.
The HāiiĀ region formed by a quasar surrounded by a predominantly neutral IGM is similar to a classical Strƶmgren sphere formed by an O or B star [101]. The main difference is that a Strƶmgren sphere is static, the continuous emission of ionizing radiation being balanced by recombinations in the inter-stellar medium, whereas the density of the IGM during reionization is so low that the HāiiĀ region around a high-redshift quasar can be expected to grow for the entirety of the quasarās lifetime.
- 8.
The fact that the ionization front grows at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light implies that care must be taken when calculating the time that the quasar has been emitting ionizing radiation; but the fact that the observed photons and the ionizing photons take the same time to reach the edge of the NZ leads to an exact cancellation in the case of the line-of-sight observations discussed in Sect.ā6.1 [8, 106].
- 9.
The physical processes that produce a quasar NZ at zĀ \( \buildrel > \over \sim \)Ā 6 are the same as those responsible for the proximity effect (e.g., [117]) in lower redshift quasars.
- 10.
EquationĀ (33) makes it clear that estimates for both Ī ion and T q are needed if any attempt is to be made to infer f HI from the scale of either the NZ or the HāiiĀ region. It is at least plausible to assume that the ionization rate is proportional to the quasarās luminosity, L, at the moment of observation, leading to the use of the ācorrectedā NZ radius [3] \( R_{\mathrm{NZ,corr}} = R_{\mathrm{NZ}}\,10^{2/5[M_{1450}-(-27)]/3} \propto R_{\mathrm{NZ}}/L^{1/3} \), defined so that quasars of different luminosities can be compared on an approximately equal footing.
- 11.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Xiahoui Fan, Zoltan Haiman, Chris Hirata, Linhau Jiang, Leon Lucy, Andrei Mesinger, Subu Mohanty, Ashara Peiris, Andrew Pontzen, Steve Warren and Chris Willott for useful discussions about quasars, reionization and the rich physics of the hydrogen atom.
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Mortlock, D. (2016). Quasars as Probes of Cosmological Reionization. In: Mesinger, A. (eds) Understanding the Epoch of Cosmic Reionization. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 423. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21957-8_7
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