{"paper":{"title":"An emulator for the ionizing photon mean free path in ultra-high resolution simulations: the implications of mean free path measurements for the reionization history","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"astro-ph.CO","authors_text":"Anson D'Aloisio, Christopher Cain, Hurum Maksora Tohfa, Matthew McQuinn","submitted_at":"2026-02-03T18:54:31Z","abstract_excerpt":"Measurements of the mean free path of ionizing photons from high-redshift quasar spectra at $z \\sim 5$-$6$ constrain the reionization history, but interpreting them requires modeling the kiloparsec-scale clumping that large-volume reionization simulations cannot resolve. We present a deep learning emulator for the mean free path (MFP) trained on high-resolution cosmological radiative transfer simulations of ionization fronts sweeping through small 2 comoving Mpc/h volumes. Using a residual multi-layer perceptron neural network, we predict the MFP at a given redshift as a function of the reioni"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2602.03923","kind":"arxiv","version":3},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2602.03923/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}