arXiv subjects

S. Peng Oh

Publications and source records attributed to S. Peng Oh.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2006

Feedback from Clustered Sources During Reionization

The reionization history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at high redshift (z > 6) was likely strongly shaped by several global feedback processes. Because the earliest ionizing sources formed at the locations of the rare density peaks, their spatial distribution was strongly clustered. Here we demonstrate that this clustering significantly boosts the impact of feedback processes operating at high redshift. We build a semi-analytical model to include feedback and clustering simultaneously, and apply this model to the suppression of star-formation in minihalos due to photoionization. The model is built on the excursion-set-based formalism of Furlanetto, Zaldarriaga and Hernquist (2004), which incorporates the clustering of ionizing sources, and which we here extend to include suppression of star formation in minihalos. We find that clustering increases the mean HII bubble size by a factor of several, and it dramatically increases the fraction of minihalos that are suppressed, by a factor of up to 60 relative to a randomly distributed population. This enhanced suppression can significantly reduce the electron scattering optical depth, as required by the three-year data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). We argue that source clustering is likely to similarly boost the importance of a variety of other feedback mechanisms.

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arXiv2006

Redshifted 21 Centimeter Emission from Minihalos Before Reionization

Before reionization, the intergalactic medium (IGM) may have been sufficiently cold for low-mass "minihalos" to condense out of the gas and subsequently affect reionization. Previous work has shown that minihalos generate reasonably large 21 cm fluctuations. Here we consider this signal in its proper cosmological context and show that isolating minihalos from the rest of the IGM is extremely difficult. Using the well-known halo model, we compute the power spectrum of 21 cm fluctuations from minihalos and show that the signal decreases rapidly as feedback increases the Jeans mass. We then show that even a small Lyman-alpha background increases the 21 cm fluctuations of the diffuse IGM well beyond those of the minihalos; because the mass fraction in the IGM is much larger, minihalos will lie buried within the IGM signal. The distinctive signatures of non-linear bias and minihalo structure emerge only at much smaller scales, well beyond the resolution of any upcoming instruments. Using simple, but representative, reionization histories, we then show that the required Lyman-alpha background level is most likely achieved at z>15, while minihalos are still rare, so that they are almost always degenerate with the diffuse IGM.

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arXiv2006

Model Atmospheres for Irradiated Giant Stars: Implications for the Galactic Center

Irradiation of a stellar atmosphere by an external source (e.g. an AGN) changes its structure and therefore its spectrum. Using a state-of-the-art stellar atmosphere code, we calculate the infrared spectra of such irradiated and transformed stars. We show that the original spectrum of the star, which is dominated by molecular bands, changes dramatically when irradiated even by a low-luminosity AGN ($L_{\rm X} = 10^{33}$ erg s$^{-1}$), becoming dominated by atomic lines in absorption. We study the changes in the spectrum of low-mass carbon- and oxygen-rich giant stars as they are irradiated by a modest AGN, similar to the one at the Galactic center (GC). The resulting spectra are similar to those of the faintest S-cluster stars observed in the GC. The spectrum of a star irradiated by a much brighter AGN, like that powered by a tidally disrupted star, is very different from that of any star currently observed near the GC. For the first time we have discovered that the structure of the atmosphere of an irradiated giant changes dramatically and induces a double inversion layer. We show that irradiation at the current level can explain the observed trend of CO band intensities decreasing as a function of increasing proximity to Sg $A^{*}$. This may indicate that (contrary to previous claims) there is no paucity of old giants in the GC, which coexist simultaneously with young massive stars.

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arXiv2005

Have We Detected Patchy Reionization in Quasar Spectra?

The Lyman-alpha forest at z >~ 5.5 shows strong scatter in the mean transmission even when smoothed over very large spatial scales, >~ 50 Mpc/h. This has been interpreted as a signature of strongly fluctuating radiation fields, or patchy reionization. To test this claim, we calculate the scatter arising solely from density fluctuations, with a uniform ionizing background, using analytic arguments and simulations. This scatter alone is comparable to that observed. It rises steeply with redshift and is of order unity by z ~ 6, even on ~ 50 Mpc/h scales. This arises because: i) at z ~ 6, transmission spectra, which are sensitive mainly to rare voids, are highly biased (with a linear bias factor b >~ 4-5) tracers of underlying density fluctuations, and ii) projected power from small-scale transverse modes is aliased to long wavelength line-of-sight modes. Inferring patchy reionization from quasar spectra is therefore subtle and requires much more detailed modeling. Similarly, we expect order unity transmission fluctuations in the z ~ 3 HeII Lyman-alpha forest from density fluctuations alone, on the scales over which these measurements are typically made.

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arXiv2005

Taxing the Rich: Recombinations and Bubble Growth During Reionization

Reionization is inhomogeneous for two reasons: the clumpiness of the intergalactic medium (IGM) and clustering of the discrete ionizing sources. While numerical simulations can in principle take both into account, they are at present limited by small box sizes. On the other hand, analytic models have only examined the limiting cases of a clumpy IGM (with uniform ionizing emissivity) and clustered sources (embedded in a uniform IGM). Here, we present an analytic model for the evolving topology of reionization that includes both factors. At first, recombinations can be ignored and ionized bubbles grow primarily through major mergers. As a result, reionization resembles "punctuated equilibrium," with a series of well-separated sharp jumps in the ionizing background. These features are local effects and do not reflect similar jumps in the global ionized fraction. We then combine our bubble model with a simple description of recombinations in the IGM. We show that the bubbles stop growing when recombinations balance ionizations. If the IGM density structure is similar to that at moderate redshifts, this limits the bubble radii to ~20 comoving Mpc; however, it may be much smaller if the IGM is significantly clumpier at higher redshifts. Once a bubble reaches saturation, that region of the universe has for all intents and purposes entered the "post-overlap" stage, so the overlap epoch actually has a finite width. This picture naturally explains the substantial large-scale variation in Lyman-series opacity along the lines of sight to the known z>6 quasars. More quasar spectra will shed light on the transition between the "bubble-dominated" topology characteristic of reionization and the "web-dominated" topology characteristic of the later universe. [Abridged]

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arXiv2005

Lyman Alpha Radiative Transfer in a Multi-Phase Medium

Hydrogen Ly-alpha is our primary emission-line window into high redshift galaxies. Surprisingly, despite an extensive literature, Ly-alpha radiative transfer in the most realistic case of a dusty, multi-phase medium has not received detailed theoretical attention. We investigate resonant scattering through an ensemble of dusty, moving, optically thick gas clumps. We treat each clump as a scattering particle and use Monte Carlo simulations of surface scattering to quantify continuum and Ly-alpha surface scattering angles, absorption probabilities, and frequency redistribution, as a function of the gas dust content. This atomistic approach speeds up the simulations by many orders of magnitude, making possible calculations which are otherwise intractable. With these surface scattering results, we develop an analytic framework for estimating escape fractions and line widths as a function of gas geometry, motion, and dust content. We show that the key geometric parameter is the average number of surface scatters for escape in the absence of absorption. We consider two interesting applications: (i) Equivalent widths. Ly-alpha can preferentially escape from a dusty multi-phase ISM if most of the dust lies in cold neutral clouds, possibly explaining anomalously high EWs seen in many high redshift/submm sources. (ii) Multi-phase galactic outflows. We show the characteristic profile is asymmetric with a broad red tail, and relate the profile features to the outflow speed and gas geometry. Many future applications are envisaged. [Abridged]

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arXiv2004

How Universal is the Gunn-Peterson Trough at z~6?: A Closer Look at the Quasar SDSS J1148+5251

Detectable flux is visible in the Ly-alpha and Ly-beta troughs of the highest redshift ($z=6.42$) quasar found to date, SDSS J1148+5251. This has previously been interpreted as continuum contamination from an interloper galaxy at z=4.94. We examine the Ly-gamma trough of SDSS J1148+5251 and show that this interpretation is untenable: the spectrum does not show the continuum break in a z=4.94 galaxy expected from absorption by the intervening Ly-alpha forest. Therefore, flux must be leaking through at least one of the troughs from the quasar itself. Contrary to previous claims, the flux ratios in the Ly-alpha and Ly-beta troughs are consistent with pure transmission. From the Ly-gamma trough, we place an upper bound on the effective Ly-alpha optical depth at z~6.2 of tau < 14.3 (2 sigma). This implies a highly ionized IGM along this line of sight and significant cosmic variance in the transition toward complete Gunn-Peterson absorption. Detailed study of the observed transmission features will shed light on this era.

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arXiv2004

Excess Ionization and Soft X-ray Emission from Cooling Flow Clusters

X-ray spectroscopy of cooling-flow clusters reveal an unexpected deficit of soft X-ray emission lines from gas at ~1/3 of the ambient plasma temperature, across a wide range of X-ray luminosities and virial temperatures. We propose excess ionization from either a population of suprathermal electrons or photoionization by X-ray continuum emission from hot gas or a central AGN as a means of decoupling the thermal state of the gas from its emission line spectrum. The former effect is thought to operate in the solar corona. Because they generally become important at some fixed fraction of the cluster gas temperature, such mechanisms could in principle explain both the universality and temperature dependence of the emission line suppression, properties which none of the present-day models based on gas heating can explain. Ultimately these models cannot explain the observations; however, they have attractive and robust features which could be useful in elucidating a final solution to the soft X-ray deficit.

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arXiv2004

Quasar Feedback: the Missing Link in Structure Formation

We consider the impact of quasar outflows on structure formation. Such outflows are potentially more important than galactic winds, which appear insufficient to produce the level of preheating inferred from X-ray observations of galaxy clusters. Using a simple analytical model for the distribution of quasars with redshift, coupled with a one-dimensional Sedov-Taylor model for outflows, we are able to make robust statements about their impact of on structure formation. As large regions of the IGM are heated above a critical entropy of approximately 100 keV cm^2, cooling become impossible within them, regardless of changes in density. On quasar scales, this has the effect of inhibiting further formation, resulting in the observed fall-off in their number densities below z = 2. On galaxy scales, quasar feedback fixes the turn-over scale in the galaxy luminosity function (L_*) as the nonlinear scale at the redshift of strong feedback. The galaxy luminosity function then remains largely fixed after this epoch, consistent with recent observations and in contrast to the strong evolution predicted in more standard galaxy-formation models. Finally, strong quasar feedback explains why the intracluster medium is observed to have been pre-heated to entropy levels just above S_crit, the minimum excess that would not have been erased by cooling. The presence of such outflows is completely consistent with the observed properties of the Lyman-alpha forest at z ~ 2, but is expected to have a substantial and detectable impact on Compton distortions observed in the microwave background and the multiphase properties of the "warm-hot" (z=0) circumgalactic medium.

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arXiv2003

Early reionization by miniquasars

Motivated by the recent detection by WMAP of a large optical depth to Thomson scattering -- implying a very early reionization epoch -- we assess a scenario where the universe was reionized by `miniquasars' powered by intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), the remnants of the first generation of massive stars. Pregalactic IMBHs form within minihalos above the cosmological Jeans mass collapsing at z=24, get incorporated through mergers into larger and larger systems, sink to the center owing to dynamical friction, and accrete cold material. The merger history of dark halos and associated IMBHs is followed by Monte Carlo realizations of the merger hierarchy in a LCDM cosmology. While seed IMBHs that are as rare as the 3.5-sigma peaks of the primordial density field evolve largely in isolation, a significant number of black hole binary systems will form if IMBHs populate the more numerous 3-sigma peaks instead. In the case of rapid binary coalescence a fraction of IMBHs will be displaced from galaxy centers and ejected into the IGM by the `gravitational rocket' effect, rather than accrete and shine as miniquasars. We show that, under a number of plausible assumptions for the amount of gas accreted onto IMBHs and their emission spectrum, miniquasars powered by IMBHs may be responsible for cosmological reionization at z~15. Reionization by miniquasars with a hard spectrum may be more `economical' than stellar reionization, as soft X-rays escape more easily from the dense sites of star formation and travel further than EUV radiation. Energetic photons will make the diffuse IGM warm and weakly ionized prior to the epoch of reionization breakthrough, set an entropy floor, and reduce gas clumping. Future 21 cm observations may detect a preheated, weakly-ionized IGM in emission against the CMB. (abridged)

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arXiv2003

Fossil HII Regions: Self-Limiting Star Formation at High Redshift

Recent results by the WMAP satellite suggest that the intergalactic medium was significantly reionized at redshifts as high as z~17. At this early epoch, the first ionizing sources likely appeared in the shallow potential wells of mini-halos with virial temperatures T < 10^4 K. Once such an ionizing source turns off, its surrounding HII region Compton cools and recombines. Nonetheless, we show that the ``fossil'' HII regions left behind remain at high adiabats, prohibiting gas accretion and cooling in subsequent generations of mini-halos. Thus, early star formation is self-limiting. We quantify this effect to show that star formation in mini-halos cannot account for the bulk of the electron scattering opacity measured by WMAP, which must be due to more massive objects. We argue that gas entropy, rather than IGM metallicity, regulates the evolution of the global ionizing emissivity, and impedes full reionization until lower redshifts. We discuss several important consequences of this early entropy floor for reionization. It reduces gas clumping, curtailing the required photon budget for reionization. An entropy floor also prevents H2 formation and cooling, due to reduced gas densities: it greatly enhances feedback from UV photodissociation of H2. An early X-ray background would also furnish an entropy floor to the entire IGM; thus, X-rays impede rather than enhance H2 formation. Future 21cm observations may probe the topology of fossil HII regions.

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arXiv2003

Sunyaev-Zeldovich Fluctuations from the First Stars?

WMAP's detection of high electron-scattering optical depth suggests substantial star formation at high redshift z~17 +/- 5. On the other hand, the recovered sigma_8 ~ 0.84 +/-0.04 disfavors a cluster Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) origin for the observed small-scale-CMB fluctuation excess, which generally requires sigma_8 ~ 1.1. Here we consider the effects of high-redshift star formation on the CMB. We derive a fairly model-independent relation between the electron scattering optical depth and the number of ionizing photons emitted per baryon, and use this to calibrate the amount of high-redshift supernova activity. The resulting supernova remnants Compton cool against the CMB creating a Compton-y distortion y ~ few x 10^-6, within observational bounds. However they also create small-scale SZ fluctuations, which could be comparable with SZ fluctuations from unresolved galaxy clusters. This raises the exciting possibility that we have already detected signatures of the first stars not just once, but twice, in the CMB.

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arXiv2003

Foregrounds for 21cm Observations of Neutral Gas at High Redshift

We investigate a number of potential foregrounds for an ambitious goal of future radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and Low Frequency Array (LOFAR): spatial tomography of neutral gas at high redshift in 21cm emission. While the expected temperature fluctuations due to unresolved radio point sources is highly uncertain, we point out that free-free emission from the ionizing halos that reionized the universe should define a minimal bound. This emission is likely to swamp the expected brightness temperature fluctuations, making proposed detections of the angular patchwork of 21cm emission across the sky unlikely to be viable. An alternative approach is to discern the topology of reionization from spectral features due to 21cm emission along a pencil-beam slice. This requires tight control of the frequency-dependence of the beam in order to prevent foreground sources from contributing excessive variance. We also investigate potential contamination by galactic and extragalactic radio recombination lines (RRLs). These are unlikely to be show-stoppers, although little is known about the distribution of RRLs away from the Galactic plane. The mini-halo emission signal is always less than that of the IGM, making mini-halos unlikely to be detectable. If they are seen, it will be only in the very earliest stages of structure formation at high redshift, when the spin temperature of the IGM has not yet decoupled from the CMB.

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arXiv2002

Entropy Injection as a Global Feedback Mechanism

Both preheating of the intergalactic medium and radiative cooling of low entropy gas have been proposed to explain the deviation from self-similarity in the cluster L_x-T_x relation and the observed entropy floor in these systems. However, severe overcooling of gas in groups is necessary for radiative cooling alone to explain the observations. Non-gravitational entropy injection must therefore still be important in these systems. We point out that on scales of groups and below, gas heated to the required entropy floor cannot cool in a Hubble time, regardless of its subsequent adiabatic compression. Preheating therefore shuts off the gas supply to galaxies, and should be an important global feedback mechanism for galaxy formation. Constraints on global gas cooling can be placed from the joint evolution of the comoving star formation rate and neutral gas density. Preheating at high redshift can be ruled out; however the data does not rule out passive gas consumption without inflow since z~2. Since for preheated gas t_cool > t_dyn, we speculate that preheating could play a role in determining the Hubble sequence: at a given mass scale, high sigma peaks in the density field collapse early to form ellipticals, while low sigma peaks collapse late and quiescently accrete preheated gas to form spirals. The entropy produced by large scale shock-heating of the intergalatic medium is significant only at late times, z<1, and cannot produce these effects.

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arXiv2002

The abundance of dark galaxies

We show that gas in a large fraction of low mass dark matter halos may form Toomre stable disks, if angular momentum is conserved when the gas contracts. Such halos would be stable to star formation and therefore remain dark. This may potentially explain the discrepancy between the predicted and observed number of dwarf satellites in the Local Group, as well as the deviation between the predicted and the observed faint end slope of the luminosity function. The above mechanism does not require a strong variation of the baryon fraction with the virial mass of the dark halo. We show that model fits to rotation curves are also consistent with this hypothesis: none of the observed galaxies lie in the region of parameter space forbidden by the Toomre stability criterion.

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arXiv2002

Probing the Dark Ages with Metal Absorption Lines

Recent observations of high redshift quasars at z~6 have finally revealed complete Gunn-Peterson absorption. However, this at best constrains the volume-weighted and mass-weighted hydrogen neutral fractions to be greater than 10^-3 and 10^-2 respectively; stronger constraints are not possible due to the high optical depth for hydrogen Lyman transitions. Here I suggest certain metal lines as tracers of the hydrogen neutral fraction. These lines should cause unsaturated absorption when the IGM is almost fully neutral, if it is polluted to metallicities Z ~ 10^-3.5--10^-2.5 Z_solar. Such a minimal level of metal pollution is inevitable in the middle to late stages of reionization unless quasars rather than stars are the dominant source of ionizing photons. The OI line at 1302 Angstroms is particularly promising: the OI and H ionization potentials are almost identical, and OI should be in very tight charge exchange equilibrium with H. The SiII 1260 Angstrom transition might also be observable. At high redshift, overdense regions are the first to be polluted to high metallicity but the last to remain permanently ionized, due to the short recombination times. Such regions should produce a fluctuating OI and SiII forest which, if observed, would indicate large quantities of neutral hydrogen. The OI forest may already be detectable in the SDSS z=6.28 quasar. If seen in future high-redshift quasars, the OI and SiII forests will probe the topology of reionization and metal pollution in the early universe. If in additional the HI optical depth can be measured from the damping wing of a high-redshift gamma-ray burst, they will yield a very robust measure of the metallicity of the high-redshift universe.

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arXiv2002

Dark halo properties from rotation curves

We study a large set of high spatial resolution optical rotation curves of galaxies with the goal of determining the model parameters for a disk embedded within a CDM halo that we model either with a NFW profile or pseudo-isothermal profile. We show that parameter degeneracies present in lower resolution data are lifted at these higher resolutions. 34% of the galaxies do not have a meaningful fit when using the NFW profile and 32% when using the pseudoisothermal profile, however only 14% do not have a meaningful fit in either model. In both models we find correlations between the disk baryon fraction $f_d$ and the spin parameter of the halo $λ'$, between $f_d$ and the dark halo mass $M_{200}$, and between $M_{200}$ and the concentration parameter $c$. We show that the distribution of the concentration parameters $c$, for a NFW halo, is in good agreement with CDM predictions; no significant galaxy population is found with very low values of $c$. The overall distribution of $λ'$ is in good agreement with theoretical predictions from hierarchical tidal torque theory. The whole sample is also well fitted by a pseudo-isothermal dark halo with a core, but the size of the core is rather small (for 70% of the sample the core size is less than 2 kpc). Thus we conclude that the profile of dark matter is steep ($r^{-1}$ or steeper) down to this radius; large dark matter cores (and therefore very low dark matter central densities) seem to be excluded. LSBs tend to have higher values of $λ'$ for a given $f_d$ and lower values of $c$ for a given mass than HSBs. In an appendix we give some useful formula for pseudo-isothermal profile halos and discuss in detail the issue of parameter degeneracies.

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arXiv2001

Second-Generation Objects in the Universe: Radiative Cooling and Collapse of Halos with Virial Temperatures Above 10^4 Kelvin

The first generation of protogalaxies likely formed out of primordial gas via H2-cooling in cosmological minihalos with virial temperatures of a few 1000K. However, their abundance is likely to have been severely limited by feedback processes which suppressed H2 formation. The formation of the protogalaxies responsible for reionization and metal-enrichment of the intergalactic medium, then had to await the collapse of larger halos. Here we investigate the radiative cooling and collapse of gas in halos with virial temperatures Tvir > 10^4K. In these halos, efficient atomic line radiation allows rapid cooling of the gas to 8000 K; subsequently the gas can contract nearly isothermally at this temperature. Without an additional coolant, the gas would likely settle into a locally gravitationally stable disk; only disks with unusually low spin would be unstable. However, we find that the initial atomic line cooling leaves a large, out-of-equilibrium residual free electron fraction. This allows the molecular fraction to build up to a universal value of about x(H2) = 10^-3, almost independently of initial density and temperature. We show that this is a non--equilibrium freezeout value that can be understood in terms of timescale arguments. Furthermore, unlike in less massive halos, H2 formation is largely impervious to feedback from external UV fields, due to the high initial densities achieved by atomic cooling. The H2 molecules cool the gas further to about 100K, and allow the gas to fragment on scales of a few 100 Msun. We investigate the importance of various feedback effects such as H2-photodissociation from internal UV fields and radiation pressure due to Ly-alpha photon trapping, which are likely to regulate the efficiency of star formation.

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