Radiative Feedback and the Photoevaporation of Intergalactic Clouds

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 primordial gas-clouds and photoevaporating them. Results are presented of the first gas dynamical simulations of this process, including radiative transfer, along with some observational diagnostics.

7 pages, 6 figures. One LaTeX file, one LaTeX style file, 6 postscript files, tar-ed and gzip-ed. To appear in Proceedings of the Workshop on H_2 in the Early Universe, eds. F. Palla, E. Corbelli, and D. Galli, Memorie Della Societa Astronomica Italiana, in press (1998)