Colloquium on Apr. 28, 2022

Unveiling the astrophysics of reionization in the post-reionization era

Speaker: Paulo Montero (Tsinghua university)

Venue: Video Conference

Time: 16:00 PM, Thursday, Apr. 28, 2022

Abstract:

Cosmic reionization is the last major phase transition that our Universe goes through. In this milestone, the intergalactic medium transitions from primarily neutral, dark, and cold into mainly ionized, luminous, and warm. However, as exciting as the reionization process surely was, many aspects remain unknown, e.g. what are the sources of the ionizing photons? what is the timeline of reionization? Upcoming telescopes (e.g. JWST and SKA) will help to directly probe cosmic reionization. Nonetheless, interpretation of said measurements will strongly rely on modeling the surroundings of luminous objects (JWST) or on foreground removal (21 cm). In this talk, I will describe a promising novel method to constrain reionization through its impact on the post-reionization intergalactic medium. I will focus on the ability of the Lyman-alpha forest (using DESI) to unveil the astrophysics of reionization in the first part of my talk. In the second part, I will describe how we can unlock the full potential of this new methodology through cross-correlations of different cosmological probes of the post-reionization era. Furthermore, I will showcase the potential of this method to constrain the nature of dark matter via its exquisite small-scale sensitivity.

Report PPT:  SWIFAR_Paulo Montero.pdf