The first stars formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was only a small fraction of its present age. Their radiation transformed the previously cold and neutral... Show moreThe first stars formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was only a small fraction of its present age. Their radiation transformed the previously cold and neutral hydrogen that filled intergalactic space into the hot and ionised cosmic plasma that is observed today. This milestone in the history of the Universe is called the epoch of reionisation. Much about reionisation is still unknown. Computer simulations are one of the most promising theoretical tools to study reionisation. The wealth of high-quality data that will soon be provided by the next generation of telescopes, specifically designed to observe the reionisation event, make it a particularly exciting time to perform such simulations. The thesis "Simulating Cosmic Reionisation" presents TRAPHIC, a novel method to include the transport of ionising radiation emitted by the first stars in simulations of reionisation. TRAPHIC (TRAnsport of PHotons In Cones) is one of the first of a new type of radiative transfer methods that allow the accurate and efficient computation of the growth of ionised regions in representative models of the Universe that contain hundreds of millions of stars. First simulations that employ TRAPHIC on the Dutch national supercomputer Huygens demonstrate the importance of the concepts that underly its design. Show less
