astro-ph/0010468
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IN THE BEGINNING: THE FIRST SOURCES OF LIGHT AND THE REIONIZATION
OF THE UNIVERSE
Rennan Barkana
1
Institute for Advanced Study, Olden Lane, Princeton, NJ 08540
Abraham Loeb
Department of Astronomy,
Harvard University,
60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138
Abstract.
The formation of the first stars and quasars marks the transformation
of the universe from its smooth initial state to its clumpy current
state. In popular cosmological models, the first sources of light
began to form at a redshift z = 30 and reionized most of the hydrogen
in the universe by z = 7. Current observations are at the
threshold of
probing the hydrogen reionization epoch. The study of high-redshift
sources is likely to attract major attention in observational and
theoretical cosmology over the next decade.
Table of Contents
1 Present address:
Canadian Institute
for Theoretical Astrophysics, 60 St. George Street #1201A, Toronto,
Ontario, M5S 3H8, CANADA. Back.
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