Simulating Cosmic Reionization

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Advances in the study of cosmic reionization affect many fields, from the thermal evolution of the Lyman-alpha forest to the properties of galaxies over a large range of redshifts. Because the observational constraints are limited, theoretical modeling and numerical simulation play a relatively larger part in reionization studies than in other areas. Computational performance at the peta scale is well matched to the needs of a realistic reionization simulation, so that substantial progress can be expected in the next several years. The present research will culminate in simulations that combine large computational volumes with fully self-consistent physical modeling, providing important insights into reionization itself and into the evolution of galaxies and Lyman-alpha emitters. The simulation results will be compared with existing approximate numerical and analytical schemes, to test the physical fidelity of customarily adopted approximations.This project is an excellent vehicle for the professional training of a graduate student, and the results will be useful to a large community of scientists, from pure theorists to observers to experimentalists. The work will also impact undergraduate education and the general public. Visualization of such cosmological research stimulates curiosity and that sense of discovery afforded only by the exploration of the universe. These next-generation simulations will bring a qualitative improvement to three-dimensional visualizations previously developed by this group and used at the Adler Planetarium.