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arXiv · astro-ph/0204139

Effective Screening due to Minihalos During the Epoch of Reionization

Rennan Barkana·Abraham Loeb
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Abstract

We show that the gaseous halos of collapsed objects introduce a substantial cumulative opacity to ionizing radiation, even after the smoothly distributed hydrogen in the intergalactic medium has been fully reionized. This opacity causes a delay of around unity in redshift between the time of the overlap of ionized bubbles in the intergalactic medium and the lifting of complete Gunn-Peterson Lyman alpha absorption. The minihalos responsible for this screening effect are not resolved by existing numerical simulations of reionization.

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Rennan Barkana, Abraham Loeb. 2002-04-08. Effective Screening due to Minihalos During the Epoch of Reionization. https://doi.org/10.1086/342313

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