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arXiv · 1511.01107

Quasars as probes of cosmological reionization

Daniel J. Mortlock
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Abstract

Quasars are the most luminous non-transient sources in the epoch of cosmological reionization (i.e., which ended a billion years after the Big Bang, corresponding to a redshift of z ~ 5), 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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Daniel J. Mortlock. 2015-11-03. Quasars as probes of cosmological reionization. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21957-8_7

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