Abstract Details
| Name: BIDISHA BANDYOPADHYAY Affiliation: UNIVERSITY OF DELHI Conference ID: ASI2016_590 Title : Can Annihilating Clumped Dark Matter lead to Helium Reionization? Authors and Co-Authors : Dominik R. G. Schleicher, Departamento de Astronom\'ia, Facultad Ciencias F\'isicas y Matemt\'icas, Universidad de Concepci\'on, Av. Esteban Iturra s/n Barrio Universitario, Casilla 160-C, Concepci\'on, Chile Abstract Type : Oral Abstract Category : General Relativity and Cosmology Abstract : Helium reionization is an important phenomenon during the course of the thermal evolution of the IGM. The mean free path of photons above 54.4 eV are affected by this process. Helium reionization is mostly driven by energetic photons from quasars at z<6. However, here we explore a different mechanism through which the reionization is achieved. In this work we have investigated how annihilation of dark matter inside halos during structure formation can contribute to reionization of helium at z>6. An important factor that influences the extent to which annihilation of dark matter is the degree of clumping. We study the effect of the dark matter clumping factor (which depends on the density profiles) in enhancing the annihilation rate at late times. We find that the clumping leads to an additional fraction of ionized helium as compared to the standard model. |