Speaker
Description
We know very little about the first galaxies that started the Cosmic Dawn (CD) and led to the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). Theory predicts these objects are highly biased, experiencing episodes of stochastic star-formation and feedback. As a consequence, radiation fields driving the CD and the EoR are expected to be very inhomogeneous. The inhomogeneity and timing of these cosmic milestones can be measured with CMB and other EoR and CD observations. We use efficient semi-numerical simulations to compute 3D lightcones of patchy EoR and other cosmic fields. We forward model the latest CMB and galaxy observations, including the patchy kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich signal, the Thomson scattering CMB optical depth and galaxy UV luminosity functions. We perform Bayesian inference, constraining the timing and duration of the EoR to be very late, and fairly rapid. We also find that the characteristic escape fraction of ionizing photons is