This is the astro-ph blog of the Theoretical Modelling of Cosmic Structures group (TMoX) at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. We are an independent Max-Planck Research Group focusing on the various aspects in the formation and evolution of galaxies. Part of our focus is on the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies, super-massive black holes, the formation of the first structures in the universe and the enrichment history of the Universe. We are theoreticians using analytic modelling as well as numerical simulations in our work.

The CosmologyCake blog is dedicated to the discussion of research papers and current developments. We will regularly post interesting papers and comment on them. Feel free to leave your comments as well. We encourage authors of discussed papers to post replies if they wish to. Our aim is to provide a platform to discuss recent astro-ph papers within a wider audience. Please feel free to send papers you would like to be discussed to us at tmoxgroup@googlemail.com.

15 June 2012

CANDELS: The contribution of the observed galaxy population to cosmic reinisation

Authors: Finkelstein, S. et al (2012)
Paper: here

Summary: In this paper, the contribution of the observed galaxies at redshifts 6, 7 and 8 to the reionisation of the IGM is studied. Taking only the observed galaxy population, an escape fraction of 30% is necessary to sustain reionisation at z=6, while if the luminosity function is integrated down to fainter galaxies, an escape fraction of 10% is sufficient. At redshifts 7 and 8 the observed galaxies do not produce enough ionising photons and fainter galaxies are needed to complete reionisation. The inferred volume ionised fraction from the ionising emissivity of these galaxy populations is consistent with observations of quasar spectra and Lyman-alpha spectroscopy, but inconsistent with the WMAP measurements of the Thomson scattering optical depth.
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