Probing the Epoch of Early Baryonic Infall Through 21cm Fluctuations

After cosmological recombination, the primordial hydrogen gas decoupled from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and fell into the gravitational potential wells of the dark matter. The neutral hydrogen imprinted acoustic oscillations on the pattern of brightness fluctuations due to its redshifted 21cm absorption of the CMB. Unlike CMB temperature fluctuations which probe the power spectrum at cosmic recombination, we show that observations of the 21cm fluctuations at z ~ 20-200 can measure four separate fluctuation modes (with a fifth mode requiring very high precision), thus providing a unique probe of the geometry and composition of the universe.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, MNRAS Letters, accepte

Cores in Dwarf Galaxies from Dark Matter with a Yukawa Potential

We show that cold dark matter particles interacting through a Yukawa potential could naturally explain the recently observed cores in dwarf galaxies without affecting the dynamics of objects with a much larger velocity dispersion, such as clusters of galaxies. The velocity dependence of the associated cross-section as well as the possible exothermic nature of the interaction alleviates earlier concerns about strongly interacting dark matter. Dark matter evaporation in low-mass objects might explain the observed deficit of satellite galaxies in the Milky Way halo and have important implications for the first galaxies and reionization.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

GRB Cosmology: Probing The Early Universe

Current observations are about to open up a direct observational window into the final frontier of cosmology: the crucial first billion years in cosmic history when the first stars and galaxies formed. Even before the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, it would be possible to utilize Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) as unique probes of cosmic star formation and the state of the intergalactic medium up to redshifts of the first stars. The ongoing Swift mission might be the first observatory to detect individual Population III stars, provided that massive metal-free stars were able to trigger GRBs. Swift will empirically constrain the redshift at which Population III star formation was terminated, thus providing crucial input to models of cosmic reionization and metal enrichment.Astronom

Constraining the unexplored period between reionization and the dark ages with observations of the global 21 cm signal

Observations of the frequency dependence of the global brightness temperature of the redshifted 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen may be possible with single dipole experiments. In this paper, we develop a Fisher matrix formalism for calculating the sensitivity of such instruments to the 21 cm signal from reionization and the dark ages. We show that rapid reionization histories with duration delta z< 2 can be constrained, provided that local foregrounds can be well modelled by low order polynomials. It is then shown that observations in the range nu = 50 - 100 MHz can feasibly constrain the Lyman alpha and X-ray emissivity of the first stars forming at z = 15 - 25, provided that systematic temperature residuals can be controlled to less than 1 mK. Finally, we demonstrate the difficulty of detecting the 21 cm signal from the dark ages before star formation.Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures, submitted to PR

Constraining the Minimum Mass of High-Redshift Galaxies and Their Contribution to the Ionization State of the IGM

We model the latest HST WFPC3/IR observations of > 100 galaxies at redshifts z=7-8 in terms of a hierarchical galaxy formation model with starburst activity. Our model provides a distribution of UV luminosities per dark matter halo of a given mass and a natural explanation for the fraction of halos hosting galaxies. The observed luminosity function is best fit with a minimum halo mass per galaxy of 10^{9.4+0.3-0.9} Msun, corresponding to a virial temperature of 10^{4.9+0.2-0.7} K. Extrapolating to faint, undetected galaxies, the total production rate of ionizing radiation depends critically on this minimum mass. Future measurements with JWST should determine whether the entire galaxy population can comfortably account for the UV background required to keep the intergalactic medium ionized.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, submitted to ApJ, comments welcom

C.V.D. annual report: November 1965 research project RU27-1 :an analogue method for the determination of potential distributions in semiconductor systems

A general method for the solution of the nonlinear Shockley-Poisson differential equation which governs the potential distribution in non-degenerate semiconductor systems is described which can be applied to the evaluation of depletion layer widths, carrier densities and capacitance bias relationships of p-n junction structures. The method is based upon the use of a particular type of resistance network analogue and results obtained for several one and two dimensional configurations are discussed

The Cosmic Microwave Background and the Ionization History of the Universe

Details of how the primordial plasma recombined and how the universe later reionized are currently somewhat uncertain. This uncertainty can restrict the accuracy of cosmological parameter measurements from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). More positively, future CMB data can be used to constrain the ionization history using observations. We first discuss how current uncertainties in the recombination history impact parameter constraints, and show how suitable parameterizations can be used to obtain unbiased parameter estimates from future data. Some parameters can be constrained robustly, however there is clear motivation to model recombination more accurately with quantified errors. We then discuss constraints on the ionization fraction binned in redshift during reionization. Perfect CMB polarization data could in principle distinguish different histories that have the same optical depth. We discuss how well the Planck satellite may be able to constrain the ionization history, and show the currently very weak constraints from WMAP three-year data.Comment: Changes to match MNRAS accepted versio