Stellar black holes and HMXBs at the dawn of the universe
by
F. Mirabel
→
Europe/Stockholm
FA 32
FA 32
Description
The re-ionization epoch of the universe that took place during its first billon years is one of the major frontiers in cosmology. Based on the observations of accreting stellar black holes and High Mass X-Ray Binaries (HMXBs) in the local universe, I propose that a large fraction of the first generations of massive stars in primordial galaxies ended as black holes and neutron stars in High Mass X-ray Binaries. Besides the ultraviolet radiation from their massive stellar progenitors, feedback from black holes and neutron stars in HMXBs was an additional, important source of heating and reionization of the Intergalactic Medium. X-rays and relativistic jets from the large populations of HMXBs, determined the early thermal history of the universe and maintained it ionized over large volumes of space. This has a direct impact on the properties of the faintest galaxies at high redshifts, the smallest dwarf galaxies in the local universe, and on the existing and future surveys at radio wavelengths of atomic hydrogen in the early universe.
ct: Magnus Axelsson
