Fossil Ionized bubbles around dead quasars during reionization

One of the most dramatic signatures of the reionization era may be the enormous ionized bubbles around luminous quasars (with radii reaching ~40 comoving Mpc), which may survive as "fossil" ionized regions long after their source shuts off. Here we study how the inhomogeneous intergalactic medium (IGM) evolves inside such fossils. The average recombination rate declines rapidly with time, and the brief quasar episode significantly increases the mean free path inside the fossil bubbles. As a result, even a weak ionizing background generated by galaxies inside the fossil can maintain it in a relatively highly and uniformly ionized state. For example, galaxies that would ionize 20%-30% of hydrogen in a random patch of the IGM can maintain 80%-90% ionization inside the fossil for a duration much longer than the average recombination time in the IGM. Quasar fossils at z≲ 10 thus retain their identity for nearly a Hubble time and appear "gray," distinct from both the average IGM (which has a "Swiss cheese" ionization topology and a lower mean ionized fraction) and the fully ionized bubbles around active quasars. More distant fossils, at z≳ 10, have a weaker galaxy-generated ionizing background and a higher gas density, so they can attain a Swiss cheese topology similar to the rest of the IGM, but with a smaller contrast between the ionized bubbles and the partially neutral regions separating them. Analogous He III fossils should exist around the epoch of He II/He III reionization at z ∼ 3, although rapid recombination inside the He III fossils is more common. Our model of inhomogeneous recombination also applies to "double-reionization" models and shows that a nonmonotonic reionization history is even more unlikely than previously thought.