Signatures of Stellar Reionization of the Universe

Abstract

The high ionization level and universal metallicity (1% solar) of the intergalactic gas at redshifts z<5 implies that nonlinear structure had started to form in the universe at earlier times than we currently probe. In Cold Dark Matter (CDM) cosmologies, the first generation of baryonic objects emerges at redshifts z=10-50. Here we examine the observable consequences of the possibility that an early generation of stars reionized the universe and resulted in the observed metallicity of the Lyman-alpha forest. Forthcoming microwave anisotropy experiments will be sensitive to the damping of anisotropies caused by scattering off free electrons from the reionization epoch. For a large range of CDM models with a Scalo stellar mass function, we find that reionization occurs at a redshift z>10 and damps the amplitude of anisotropies on angular scales <10 degrees by a detectable amount, of order 10-25%. However, reionization is substantially delayed if the initial stellar mass function transformed most of the baryons into low mass stars. In this case, the mass fraction of pre-galactic stars could be constrained from the statistics of microlensing events in galactic halos or along lines of sight to quasars. Deep infrared imaging with future space telescopes (such as SIRTF or the Next Generation Space Telescope) will be able to detect bright star clusters at z>5. The cumulative Bremsstrahlung emission from these star clusters yields a measurable distortion to the spectrum of the microwave background.