Constraining the era of helium reionization using fast radio bursts

Understand

The discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs) about a decade ago opened up new possibilities for probing the ionization history of the Intergalactic Medium (IGM).

• In this paper we study the use of FRBs for tracing the epoch of HeII reionization, using simulations of their dispersion measures.
• We model dispersion measure contributions from the Milky Way, the IGM (homogeneous and inhomogeneous) and a possible host galaxy as a function of redshift and star formation rate.
• We estimate the number of FRBs required to distinguish between a model of the Universe in which helium reionization occurred at z = 3 from a model in which it occurred at z = 6 using a 2-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnoff test.