Ionizing radiation from z=4-10 galaxies

Understand

We compute the escape of ionizing radiation from galaxies in the redshift interval z=4-10, i.e., during and after the epoch of reionization, using a high-resolution set of galaxies, formed in fully cosmological simulations.

• The simulations invoke early, energetic feedback, and the galaxies evolve into a realistic population at z=0.
• Our galaxies cover nearly four orders of magnitude in masses (10^{7.8}-10^{11.5}\msun) and more than five orders in star formation rates (10^{-3.5}-10^{1.7}\msun\yr^{-1}), and we include an approximate treatment of dust absorption.
• We show that the source-averaged Lyman-limit escape fraction at z=10.4 is close to 80% declining monotonically with time as more massive objects build up at lower redshifts.