Characteristic Scales During Reionization

Abstract

One of the key observables of the reionization era is the distribution of neutral and ionized gas. Recently, Furlanetto, Zaldarriaga, & Hernquist developed a simple analytic model to describe the growth of HII regions during this era. Here, we examine some of the fundamental simplifying assumptions behind this model and generalise it in several important ways. The model predicts that the ionized regions attain a well-defined characteristic size R_c that ranges from R_c~1 Mpc in the early phases to R_c>10 Mpc in the late phases. We show that R_c is determined primarily by the bias of the galaxies driving reionization; hence measurements of this scale constrain a fundamental property of the first galaxies. The variance around R_c, on the other hand, is determined primarily by the underlying matter power spectrum. We then show that increasing the ionizing efficiency of massive galaxies shifts R_c to significantly larger scales and decreases the importance of recombinations. These differences can be observed with forthcoming redshifted 21 cm surveys (increasing the brightness temperature fluctuations by up to a factor of two on large scales) and with measurements of small-scale anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Finally, we show that stochastic fluctuations in the galaxy population only broaden the bubble size distribution significantly if massive galaxies are responsible for most of the ionizing photons. We argue that the key results of this model are robust to many of our uncertainties about the reionization process.