Stellar black holes at the dawn of the universe (I. F. Mirabel et al.)

Vol. 528In section 3. Cosmology

Stellar black holes at the dawn of the Universe

The authors suggest that black holes in high-mass X-ray binaries may have contributed strongly to the reionization of the IGM over a large volume of space out of reach of previously proposed sources. X-rays have a longer mean free path than the UV photon, and this is why such sources may ionize larger volumes of space. The authors present arguments for why these sources should be more frequent in high-redshift, low-metallicity regions. Consequences for the observations at the high redshift of the neutral hydrogen 21 cm line and for the formation of dwarf galaxies are discussed.