Reionization of the Universe by Starlight and the Photoevaporation of Cosmological Minihalos

Abstract

The first sources of ionizing radiation to condense out of the dark and neutral IGM sent ionization fronts sweeping outward through their surroundings, overtaking other condensed objects and photoevaporating them. This feedback of universal reionization on cosmic structure formation is demonstrated here by gas dynamical simulations, including radiative transfer, for the case of a cosmological minihalo of dark matter and baryons exposed to an external source of ionizing starlight, just after the passage of the global ionization front created by the source.

Invited paper, to appear in Cosmic Evolution and Galaxy Formation: Structure, Interactions, and Feedback, ASP Conference Series, eds. J. Franco, E. Terlevich, O. Lopez-Cruz, I. Aretxaga, in press (2000) 6 pages, latex