The impact and response of mini-halos and the inter-halo medium on cosmic reionization

Abstract

An ionization front (I-front) that propagates through an inhomogeneous medium is slowed down by self-shielding and recombinations. We perform cosmological radiation hydrodynamics simulations of the I-front propagation during the epoch of cosmic reionization. The simulations resolve gas in mini-halos (halo mass 104 ≲ Mh[M⊙] ≲ 108) that could dominate recombinations, in a computational volume that is large enough to sample the abundance of such halos. The numerical resolution is sufficient (gas-particle mass ∼20M⊙, spatial resolution <0.1 ckpc) to allow accurate modelling of the hydrodynamic response of gas to photo-heating. We quantify the photo-evaporation time of mini-halos as a function of Mh and its dependence on the photo-ionization rate, Γ−12, and the redshift of reionization, zi. The recombination rate can be enhanced over that of a uniform medium by a factor ∼10 − 20 early on. The peak value increases with Γ−12 and decreases with zi, due to the enhanced contribution from mini-halos. The clumping factor, cr, decreases to a factor of a few at ∼100 Myr after the passage of the I-front when the mini-halos have been photo-evaporated; this asymptotic value depends only weakly on Γ−12. Recombinations increase the required number of photons per baryon to reionize the Universe by 20-100 per cent, with the higher value occurring when Γ−12 is high and zi is low. We complement the numerical simulations with simple analytical models for the evaporation rate and the inverse Strömgren layer. The study also demonstrates the proficiency and potential of sph-m1rt to address astrophysical problems in high-resolution cosmological simulations.