Pith. sign in

REVIEW 16 cited by

Revealing reionization with the thermal history of the intergalactic medium: new constraints from the Lyman-$\alpha$ flux power spectrum

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 1809.06980 v2 pith:ESBDF6LX submitted 2018-09-19 astro-ph.CO

classification astro-ph.CO
keywords reionizationlesssimconstraintsfluxhistorypowerthermalalpha
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
abstract

We present a new investigation of the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) during and after reionization using the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest flux power spectrum at $4.0\lesssim z\lesssim5.2$. Using a sample of 15 high-resolution spectra, we measure the flux power down to the smallest scales ever probed at these redshifts ($-1\lesssim \log(k/$km$^{-1}$s)$\lesssim -0.7$). These scales are highly sensitive to both the instantaneous temperature of the IGM and the total energy injected per unit mass during and after reionization. We measure temperatures at the mean density of $T_{0}\sim7000$-8000 K, consistent with no significant temperature evolution for redshifts $4.2\lesssim z\lesssim5.0$. We also present the first observational constraints on the integrated IGM thermal history, finding that the total energy input per unit mass increases from $u_{0}\sim4.6$ ${\rm eV}$ $m_{\rm p}^{-1}$ to 7.3 eV $m_{\rm p}^{-1}$ from $z\sim 6$ to $4.2$ assuming a $\Lambda$-CDM cosmology. We show how these results can be used simultaneously to obtain information on the timing and the sources of the reionization process. Our first proof of concept using simplistic models of instantaneous reionization produces results comparable to and consistent with the recent Planck constraints, favoring models with $z_{\rm rei}\sim 8.5^{+1.1}_{-0.8}$.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 16 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Strongest constraints on dark acoustic oscillations from the Lyman-alpha forest

    astro-ph.CO 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    First constraints from Ly-alpha forest limit DAO participation to at most 30% of dark matter for peaks below 50 h/Mpc at 95% CL using a deep kernel emulator of simulations.

  2. A self-consistent analytical model for both the photoionization rate and reionization history

    astro-ph.CO 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    A new analytical formalism self-consistently predicts both the ionized fraction x_i(z) and photoionization rate Gamma_HI(z), achieving percent-level accuracy in x_i and 20-30% accuracy in Gamma_HI versus radiative tra...

  3. Modeling the Cosmological Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest at the Field Level

    astro-ph.CO 2025-06 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    An effective-field-theory forward model reproduces the Lyman-alpha forest field from a hydrodynamic simulation at percent level, down to a few megaparsecs, using the same initial conditions.

  4. Ringing of the Reionization: A first direct measurement of the intergalactic pressure smoothing scale at redshift z>4.2 as imprinted onto small-scale peculiar velocities in the Lyman-alpha forest

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 reject novelty 6.0 of 10

    A claimed first direct measurement of the IGM pressure smoothing scale at z≈4.2–5.0 from a fitted peak in the Lyman-alpha flux power spectrum, tied to an acoustic feature in the peculiar velocity gradient.

  5. High resolution Lyman-{\alpha} forest constraints on dark matter-neutrino scattering

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The Lyman-alpha forest constrains dark matter-neutrino scattering to u_nu_chi < 1.5e-8 (95% C.L.), excluding previously claimed hints of a non-zero interaction.

  6. Fast(er)PM and Moving Mesh: JAX-native Geometric Multigrid Methods

    astro-ph.IM 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Warm-started Chebyshev geometric multigrid is competitive with distributed FFTs for FastPM and enables a differentiable moving-mesh particle–mesh gravity solver in JAX.

  7. Lyman-Alpha Forest and its Cross-Correlation with High-Redshift Galaxies in Effective Field Theory at the Field Level

    astro-ph.CO 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    An EFT-based field-level forward model for the Lyman-alpha forest matches simulations at the percent level on quasi-linear scales and generates mocks for DESI and DESI-II analyses.

  8. Bridging Simulations and EFT: A Hybrid Model of the Lyman-Alpha Forest Field

    astro-ph.CO 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A hybrid EFT forward model using N-body displacements reproduces the simulated Lyman-alpha forest to 5% at k <= 1 h/Mpc with a white-noise residual.

  9. The Compressed 3D Lyman-Alpha Forest Bispectrum

    astro-ph.CO 2025-10 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The Lyman-alpha forest bispectrum can be compressed into 26 skew spectra, including a new shifted variant, with tree-level EFT predictions matching simulations at 1-2 sigma up to k≈0.17 h/Mpc.

  10. Small-scale Lyman alpha forest cosmology with PRIYA: Constraints from XQ100 and KODIAQ-SQUAD one-dimensional flux power spectra

    astro-ph.CO 2025-09 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The XQ100 Lyman-alpha forest power spectrum, modeled with the PRIYA simulations, gives cosmological constraints consistent with eBOSS and Planck and constrains the IGM thermal history without external temperature data...

  11. Patchy Helium and Hydrogen Reionization from the Kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect and Galaxies

    astro-ph.CO 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Forecasts show that cross-correlating kSZ temperature-squared maps with galaxy-reconstructed velocity-squared maps can jointly constrain hydrogen and helium reionization, making helium measurable with CMB-HD and MegaMapper.

  12. 3D matter power spectrum correspondence to 1D Lyman-alpha flux power spectrum

    astro-ph.CO 2025-05 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A phenomenological recipe maps 3D matter power to 1D Lyman-alpha flux power, adds warm dark matter and pressure cutoffs in quadrature, and matches simulations to within 5-20%.

  13. The ACCEL2 Project: Precision Measurements of EFT Parameters and BAO Peak Shifts for the Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest

    astro-ph.CO 2024-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A one-loop EFT model matches ACCEL2 Lyman-alpha forest simulations well and predicts BAO scale shifts of roughly -0.2 to -0.3 percent at z=2.

  14. Lyman-$\alpha$ forest constraints on pure and mixed fuzzy dark matter

    astro-ph.CO 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0 of 10

    Lyman-alpha forest data yield m_FDM > 1.9e-21 eV (95% CL) for pure FDM and f_FDM upper limits of 0.07-0.65 for mixed FDM at log10(m_FDM/eV) = -23 to -21.

  15. Playground of Lognormal Seminumerical Simulations of~the~Lyman~$\alpha$ Forest: Thermal History of the Intergalactic Medium

    astro-ph.CO 2024-12 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    A lognormal seminumerical simulator of the Lyman-alpha forest, fit to observed flux power spectra, returns estimates of the intergalactic temperature, temperature-density slope, and Jeans length at z=3 to 5.

  16. Machine Learning Techniques for Astrophysics and Cosmology: Lyman-$\alpha$ forest

    astro-ph.CO 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 2.0 of 10

    Review of machine learning applications for analyzing Lyman-alpha forest observations to probe cosmology, reionization, and dark matter.

Pith tools