TY - JOUR
T1 - The SPHINX cosmological simulations of the first billion years
T2 - The impact of binary stars on reionization
AU - Rosdahl, Joakim
AU - Katz, Harley
AU - Blaizot, Jérémy
AU - Kimm, Taysun
AU - Michel-Dansac, Léo
AU - Garel, Thibault
AU - Haehnelt, Martin
AU - Ocvirk, Pierre
AU - Teyssier, Romain
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Astronomical Society.
PY - 2018/9/1
Y1 - 2018/9/1
N2 - We present the SPHINX suite of cosmological adaptive mesh refinement simulations, the first radiation-hydrodynamical simulations to simultaneously capture large-scale reionization and the escape of ionizing radiation from thousands of resolved galaxies. Our 5 and 10 co-moving Mpc volumes resolve haloes down to the atomic cooling limit and model the interstellar medium with better than ≈ 10 pc resolution. The project has numerous goals in improving our understanding of reionization and making predictions for future observations. In this first paper, we study how the inclusion of binary stars in computing stellar luminosities impacts reionization, compared to a model that includes only single stars. Owing to the suppression of galaxy growth via strong feedback, our galaxies are in good agreement with observational estimates of the galaxy luminosity function. We find that binaries have a significant impact on the timing of reionization: with binaries, our boxes are 99.9 percent ionized by volume at z ≈ 7, while without them our volumes fail to reionize by z = 6. These results are robust to changes in volume size, resolution, and feedback efficiency. The escape of ionizing radiation from individual galaxies varies strongly and frequently. On average, binaries lead to escape fractions of ≈ 7-10 percent, about three times higher than with single stars only. The higher escape fraction is a result of a shallower decline in ionizing luminosity with age, and is the primary reason for earlier reionization, although the higher integrated luminosity with binaries also plays a subdominant role.
AB - We present the SPHINX suite of cosmological adaptive mesh refinement simulations, the first radiation-hydrodynamical simulations to simultaneously capture large-scale reionization and the escape of ionizing radiation from thousands of resolved galaxies. Our 5 and 10 co-moving Mpc volumes resolve haloes down to the atomic cooling limit and model the interstellar medium with better than ≈ 10 pc resolution. The project has numerous goals in improving our understanding of reionization and making predictions for future observations. In this first paper, we study how the inclusion of binary stars in computing stellar luminosities impacts reionization, compared to a model that includes only single stars. Owing to the suppression of galaxy growth via strong feedback, our galaxies are in good agreement with observational estimates of the galaxy luminosity function. We find that binaries have a significant impact on the timing of reionization: with binaries, our boxes are 99.9 percent ionized by volume at z ≈ 7, while without them our volumes fail to reionize by z = 6. These results are robust to changes in volume size, resolution, and feedback efficiency. The escape of ionizing radiation from individual galaxies varies strongly and frequently. On average, binaries lead to escape fractions of ≈ 7-10 percent, about three times higher than with single stars only. The higher escape fraction is a result of a shallower decline in ionizing luminosity with age, and is the primary reason for earlier reionization, although the higher integrated luminosity with binaries also plays a subdominant role.
KW - Dark ages
KW - Early universe
KW - First stars
KW - Galaxies: high-redshift
KW - Methods: numerical
KW - Reionization
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U2 - 10.1093/mnras/sty1655
DO - 10.1093/mnras/sty1655
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85051488142
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 479
SP - 994
EP - 1016
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 1
ER -