Physics of the Intergalactic Medium During Cosmological Reionization

The primordial plasma transitioned to neutral atoms during the recombination epoch. When the first galaxies formed some 100 - 500 million years later, their starlight reionized and heated the nascent intergalactic medium.   I will discuss some of the rich physics of the intergalactic gas during this reionization process.  In the past few years, there has been significant progress towards understanding reionization.  I will highlight this progress, including the possibility that we have already observed reionization's tail end in the Lyman-alpha forest of high-redshift quasar spectra. 

 

If you would like to attend this meeting, please contact Vivian U (vivianu@uci.edu) for the Zoom link.