Observations are beginning to constrain the history of the epoch of reionization(EoR).Modeling the reionization process is indispensable to interpret the observations,to infer the properties of ionizing sources,and to...Observations are beginning to constrain the history of the epoch of reionization(EoR).Modeling the reionization process is indispensable to interpret the observations,to infer the properties of ionizing sources,and to probe the various astrophysical processes from the observational data.Here we present an improved version of the seminumerical simulation islandFAST,by incorporating inhomogeneous recombinations and a corresponding inhomogeneous ionizing background,and simulate the reionization process of neutral islands during the late EoR.We find that the islands are more fragmented in models with inhomogeneous recombinations than the case with a homogeneous recombination number.In order to investigate the effects of basic assumptions in the reionization modeling,we compare the results from islandFAST with those from 21cmFAST for the same assumptions on the ionizing photon sources and sinks,to find how the morphology of the ionization field and the reionization history depend on the different treatments of these two models.Such systematic bias should be noted when interpreting the upcoming observations.展开更多
基金supported by the National Key R&D Program of China No.2018YFE0120800the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant No.11973047+1 种基金the National Key R&D Program of China No.2022YFF0504300the National SKA Program of China Nos.2020SKA0110401,and 2020SKA0110402。
文摘Observations are beginning to constrain the history of the epoch of reionization(EoR).Modeling the reionization process is indispensable to interpret the observations,to infer the properties of ionizing sources,and to probe the various astrophysical processes from the observational data.Here we present an improved version of the seminumerical simulation islandFAST,by incorporating inhomogeneous recombinations and a corresponding inhomogeneous ionizing background,and simulate the reionization process of neutral islands during the late EoR.We find that the islands are more fragmented in models with inhomogeneous recombinations than the case with a homogeneous recombination number.In order to investigate the effects of basic assumptions in the reionization modeling,we compare the results from islandFAST with those from 21cmFAST for the same assumptions on the ionizing photon sources and sinks,to find how the morphology of the ionization field and the reionization history depend on the different treatments of these two models.Such systematic bias should be noted when interpreting the upcoming observations.