Characteristic scales during reionization

One of the key observables of the reionization era is the distribution of neutral and ionized gas. Recently, Furlanetto, Zaldarriaga, hence measurements of this scale constrain a fundamental property of the first galaxies. The variance around Rc, on the other hand, is determined primarily by the underlying matter power spectrum. We then show that increasing the ionizing efficiency of massive galaxies shifts Rc to significantly larger scales and decreases the importance of recombinations. These differences can be observed with forthcoming redshifted 21 cm surveys (increasing the brightness temperature fluctuations by up to a factor of two on large scales) and with measurements of small-scale anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Finally, we show that stochastic fluctuations in the galaxy population only broaden the bubble size distribution significantly if massive galaxies are responsible for most of the ionizing photons. We argue that the key results of this model are robust to many of our uncertainties about the reionization process.