Most of the photons that reionized the Universe came from dwarf galaxies

被引：92

作者：

Atek, Hakim ^{[1
]}

Labbe, Ivo ^{[2
]}

Furtak, Lukas J. ^{[3
]}

Chemerynska, Iryna ^{[1
]}

Fujimoto, Seiji ^{[4
]}

Setton, David J. ^{[5
,6
]}

Miller, Tim B. ^{[7
,8
]}

Oesch, Pascal ^{[9
,10
]}

Bezanson, Rachel ^{[5
,6
]}

Price, Sedona H. ^{[5
,6
]}

Dayal, Pratika ^{[11
]}

Zitrin, Adi ^{[2
]}

Kokorev, Vasily ^{[11
]}

Weaver, John R. ^{[12
]}

Brammer, Gabriel ^{[10
]}

van Dokkum, Pieter ^{[11
]}

Williams, Christina C. ^{[13
,14
]}

Cutler, Sam E. ^{[12
]}

Feldmann, Robert ^{[15
]}

Fudamoto, Yoshinobu ^{[16
,17
]}

Greene, Jenny E. ^{[18
]}

Leja, Joel ^{[19
,20
,21
]}

Maseda, Michael, V ^{[22
]}

Muzzin, Adam ^{[23
]}

Pan, Richard ^{[24
]}

Papovich, Casey ^{[25
,26
]}

Nelson, Erica J. ^{[27
]}

Nanayakkara, Themiya ^{[2
]}

Stark, Daniel P. ^{[14
]}

Stefanon, Mauro ^{[28
]}

Suess, Katherine A. ^{[29
,30
]}

Wang, Bingjie ^{[19
,20
,21
]}

Whitaker, Katherine E. ^{[10
,12
,31
]}

机构：

[1] Sorbonne Univ, Inst Astrophys Paris, CNRS, Paris, France

[2] Swinburne Univ Technol, Ctr Astrophys & Supercomp, Melbourne, Vic, Australia

[3] Ben Gurion Univ Negev, Phys Dept, Beer Sheva, Israel

[4] Univ Texas Austin, Dept Astron, Austin, TX USA

[5] Univ Pittsburgh, Dept Phys & Astron, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA

[6] Univ Pittsburgh, PITT PACC, Pittsburgh, PA USA

[7] Northwestern Univ, Ctr Interdisciplinary Explorat & Res Astrophys CIE, Evanston, IL USA

[8] Northwestern Univ, Dept Phys & Astron, Evanston, IL USA

[9] Univ Geneva, Dept Astron, Versoix, Switzerland

[10] Univ Copenhagen, Niels Bohr Inst, Cosm Dawn Ctr DAWN, Copenhagen, Denmark

[11] Univ Groningen, Kapteyn Astron Inst, Groningen, Netherlands

[12] Univ Massachusetts, Dept Astron, Amherst, MA USA

[13] NSFs Natl Opt Infrared Astron Res Lab, Tucson, AZ USA

[14] Univ Arizona, Steward Observ, Tucson, AZ USA

[15] Univ Zurich, Inst Computat Sci, Zurich, Switzerland

[16] Waseda Univ, Waseda Res Inst Sci & Engn, Fac Sci & Engn, Tokyo, Japan

[17] Natl Astron Observ Japan, Tokyo, Japan

[18] Princeton Univ, Dept Astrophys Sci, Princeton, NJ USA

[19] Penn State Univ, Dept Astron & Astrophys, University Pk, PA USA

[20] Penn State Univ, Inst Computat & Data Sci, University Pk, PA USA

[21] Penn State Univ, Inst Gravitat & Cosmos, University Pk, PA USA

[22] Univ Wisconsin, Dept Astron, Madison, WI USA

[23] York Univ, Dept Phys & Astron, Toronto, ON, Canada

[24] Tufts Univ, Dept Phys & Astron, Medford, MA USA

[25] Texas A&M Univ, Dept Phys & Astron, College Stn, TX USA

[26] Texas A&M Univ, George P & Cynthia Woods Mitchell Inst Fundamental, College Stn, TX USA

[27] Univ Colorado, Dept Astrophys & Planetary Sci, Boulder, CO USA

[28] Univ Valencia, Dept Astron & Astrofis, Valencia, Spain

[29] Univ Calif Santa Cruz, Dept Astron & Astrophys, Santa Cruz, CA USA

[30] Stanford Univ, Kavli Inst Particle Astrophys & Cosmol, Stanford, CA USA

[31] Stanford Univ, Dept Phys, Stanford, CA USA

来源：

NATURE | 2024年 / 626卷 / 8001期

基金：

新加坡国家研究基金会; 澳大利亚研究理事会; 美国国家科学基金会;

关键词：

SIMILAR-TO; 6; LYMAN-CONTINUUM; LUMINOSITY FUNCTION; ESCAPE FRACTIONS; STELLAR; MODEL; EFFICIENCY; RESOLUTION; RELEASE; DUST;

D O I：

10.1038/s41586-024-07043-6

中图分类号：

O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];

学科分类号：

07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;

摘要：

The identification of sources driving cosmic reionization, a major phase transition from neutral hydrogen to ionized plasma around 600-800 Myr after the Big Bang(1-3), has been a matter of debate(4). Some models suggest that high ionizing emissivity and escape fractions (f(esc)) from quasars support their role in driving cosmic reionization(5,6). Others propose that the high f(esc) values from bright galaxies generate sufficient ionizing radiation to drive this process(7). Finally, a few studies suggest that the number density of faint galaxies, when combined with a stellar-mass-dependent model of ionizing efficiency and f(esc), can effectively dominate cosmic reionization(8,9). However, so far, comprehensive spectroscopic studies of low-mass galaxies have not been done because of their extreme faintness. Here we report an analysis of eight ultra-faint galaxies (in a very small field) during the epoch of reionization with absolute magnitudes between M-UV approximate to -17 mag and -15 mag (down to 0.005L* (refs. 10,11)). We find that faint galaxies during the first thousand million years of the Universe produce ionizing photons with log[xi(ion) (Hz erg(-1))] = 25.80 +/- 0.14, a factor of 4 higher than commonly assumed values(12). If this field is representative of the large-scale distribution of faint galaxies, the rate of ionizing photons exceeds that needed for reionization, even for escape fractions of the order of 5%.

引用

页码：975 / 978

页数：11

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