Effect of non-equilibrium ionization on derived physical conditions of the high-$z$ intergalactic medium

Understand

Non-equilibrium ionization effects are important in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations but are computationally expensive.

• We study the effect of non-equilibrium ionization evolution and UV ionizing background (UVB) generated with different quasar spectral energy distribution (SED) on the derived physical conditions of the intergalactic medium (IGM) at $2\leq z \leq 6$ using our post-processing tool 'Code for Ionization and Temperature Evolution' (CITE).
• CITE produces results matching well with self-consistent simulations more efficiently.
• The HeII reionization progresses more rapidly in non-equilibrium model as compared to equilibrium models.