Character and Observational Signatures of the Cosmic Dark Ages, the First Stars and the Epoch of Reionization

Objective

The Epoch of Reionization (EoR), which lasted through most of the first billion years after the Big Bang, is currently at the frontier of cosmological research. During this epoch the first stars and galaxies formed, with profound effects on early cosmological structure formation.Our understanding of this important epoch remains fairly incomplete due to the scarcity of direct observational data. This would be remedied in the near future by a number of large observational projects, including e.g. the radio arrays Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), Atacama Large Millimetre Array and Square Kilometre Array, as well as space missions like James Webb Space Telescope and Hershel, all with significant European participation. The success of these experiments relies critically upon understanding the early structure formation, feedback effects and the large-scale geometry of reionization. This proposal seeks funding to allow the PI to return to Bulgaria to help with establishing a new area of Computational Physics and Astrophysics in Sofia University and to work on producing reliable, robust and detailed predictions of the character and observational signatures of the early cosmic structures, the First Stars and EOR. This would build upon PI's current leadership in the area, where he and collaborators have pioneered the large-scale structure formation and radiative transfer simulations of this epoch and are among the leaders worldwide, along with a group at Harvard University in making predictions for the current and future observational facilities. We would perform the next generation state-of-the-art numerical simulations of early structure formation and reionization, much larger than the current ones and with more detailed microphysics. This would allow us to derive its observational signatures with unprecedented detail and accuracy, ensuring the appropriate planning of the observations and the correct interpretation of their results, resulting in va

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyphysical cosmologybig bang
• natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyastrophysics
• natural sciencesmathematicspure mathematicsgeometry
• natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyobservational astronomy

Programme(s)

• FP7-PEOPLE - Specific programme "People" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013)

Topic(s)

• PEOPLE-2007-4-3.IRG - Marie Curie Action: "International Reintegration Grants"

Call for proposal

FP7-PEOPLE-2007-4-3-IRG
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Coordinator