Helium Reionization Simulations. I. Modeling Quasars as Radiation Sources

Abstract

We introduce a new project to understand helium reionization using fully coupled $N$-body, hydrodynamics, and radiative transfer simulations. This project aims to capture correctly the thermal history of the intergalactic medium (IGM) as a result of reionization and make predictions about the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest and baryon temperature-density relation. The dominant sources of radiation for this transition are quasars, so modeling the source population accurately is very important for making reliable predictions. In this first paper, we present a new method for populating dark matter halos with quasars. Our set of quasar models include two different light curves, a lightbulb (simple on/off) and symmetric exponential model, and luminosity-dependent quasar lifetimes. Our method self-consistently reproduces an input quasar luminosity function (QLF) given a halo catalog from an $N$-body simulation, and propagates quasars through the merger history of halo hosts. After calibrating quasar clustering using measurements from BOSS, we find that the characteristic mass of quasar hosts is $M_h \sim 2.5 \times 10^{12} M_\odot$ $h^{-1}$ for the lightbulb model, and $M_h \sim 2.3 \times 10^{12} M_\odot$ $h^{-1}$ for the exponential model. In the exponential model, the peak quasar luminosity for a given halo mass is larger than that in the lightbulb model, typically by a factor of 1.5-2. The effective lifetime for quasars in the lightbulb model is 59 Myr, and in the exponential case, the effective time constant is about 15 Myr. We include semi-analytic calculations of helium reionization, and discuss how to include these quasars as sources of ionizing radiation for full hydrodynamics with radiative transfer simulations in order to study helium reionization.