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Associate Professor Chris Richardson co-authors journal article with colleagues to shed light on reionization in the early universe.

As part of a collaboration spurred by the FACE Foundation, Associate Professor of Astrophysics Chris Richardson and research scientist Vianney Lebouteiller, CEA-Saclay, co-authored their first publication together using a novel technique to analyze local dwarf galaxies.

The effort was led by Lebouteiller’s graduate student, Lise Ramambason, who selected a sample of extreme star forming galaxies thought to show properties similar to the first galaxies that formed in the early universe. By using a sophisticated method of analysis that incorporates complex topologies, Ramambason showed that porous nature of these galaxies can cause energy to leak out into the surrounding medium. This leakage is a possible mechanism that ended the “dark ages” in the early universe, leading to the epoch of reionization. The work was recently accepted to the high ranking Astrophysics & Astronomy journal, and a pre-print copy is currently available.