Heating of the Intergalactic Medium by Hydrogen Reionization

Understand

During reionization, the intergalactic medium is heated impulsively by supersonic ionization fronts (I-fronts).

• The peak gas temperatures behind the I-fronts, $T_\mathrm{reion}$, are a key uncertainty in models of the thermal history after reionization.
• Here we use high-resolution radiative transfer simulations to study the parameter space of $T_\mathrm{reion}$.
• We show that $T_\mathrm{reion}$ is only mildly sensitive to the spectrum of incident radiation over most of the parameter space, with temperatures set primarily by I-front speeds.