Probing Cosmological Reionization through Radio-Interferometric Observations of Neutral Hydrogen

by Kanan Datta (OKC)

Tuesday 15 Dec 2009, 13:15 → 14:15 Europe/Stockholm

FA32

The epoch of reionization is one of the least known chapters in the evolutionary history of the universe. During this epoch which took place before 1 billion years after the Big Bang, radiation associated with the first structures ionized the intergalactic medium. Observations of redshifted 21cm radiation from neutral hydrogen (HI) is probably the most promising future probe of the reionization process. It is thought that the reionization of the Universe occurred through the growth of ionized regions (bubbles) in the neutral IGM which eventually overlapped. In this talk we will present the possibility of detecting ionized bubbles around individual sources with present and upcoming radio telescopes. We will present a technique which makes definite predictions on the ability to detect an ionized bubble or conclusively rule out its presence within a radio map. Various related issues such as (i)size determination of bubbles, (ii) blind search for bubbles, (iii) the optimum redshift for bubble detection will also be discussed.