Did the Universe Reionize at Redshift Six?

Abstract

In light of recent observations of spectra of the quasars SDSS 1030+0524 (Becker et al. 2001) and SDSS 1044-0125 (Djorgovski et al. 2001), we study the observational signatures of different stages of the reionization epoch. During the initial, pre-overlap stage, the hydrogen throughout the universe is neutral except for isolated HII bubbles due to individual ionizing sources. The central stage of reionization is the overlap stage, during which the individual HII bubbles overlap each other and reionize the low-density gas which takes up most of the volume of the universe. Some neutral hydrogen remains in dense clumps which are then slowly reionized during post-overlap. We show that both of the recent observations are consistent with the post-overlap stage. Becker et al. (2001) may have observed the universe in the era before the end of overlap, but a conclusive proof of this requires the observation of similar intervals of Gunn-Peterson absorption at the same redshift along several additional lines of sight.