scholarly journals Implications of the z > 5 Lyman-α forest for the 21-cm power spectrum from the epoch of reionization

Author(s):  
Janakee Raste ◽  
Girish Kulkarni ◽  
Laura C Keating ◽  
Martin G Haehnelt ◽  
Jonathan Chardin ◽  
...  

Abstract Our understanding of the intergalactic medium at redshifts z = 5–6 has improved considerably in the last few years due to the discovery of quasars with z > 6 that enable Lyman-α forest studies at these redshifts. A realisation from this has been that hydrogen reionization could end much later than previously thought, so that large “islands” of cold, neutral hydrogen could exist in the IGM at redshifts z = 5–6. By using radiative transfer simulations of the IGM, we consider the implications of the presence of these neutral hydrogen islands for the 21-cm power spectrum signal and its potential detection by experiments such as hera, ska, lofar, and mwa. In contrast with previous models of the 21-cm signal, we find that thanks to the late end of reionization the 21-cm power in our simulation continues to be as high as $\Delta ^2_{21}=10~\mathrm{mK}^2$ at k ∼ 0.1 h cMpc−1 at z = 5–6. This value of the power spectrum is several orders of magnitude higher than that in conventional models considered in the literature for these redshifts. Such high values of the 21-cm power spectrum should be detectable by hera and ska1-low in ∼1000 hours, assuming optimistic foreground subtraction. This redshift range is also attractive due to relatively low sky temperature and potentially greater abundance of multiwavelength data.

2020 ◽  
Vol 494 (4) ◽  
pp. 5091-5109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prakash Gaikwad ◽  
Michael Rauch ◽  
Martin G Haehnelt ◽  
Ewald Puchwein ◽  
James S Bolton ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We compare a sample of five high-resolution, high S/N  Ly α forest spectra of bright 6 < z < ∼6.5 QSOs aimed at spectrally resolving the last remaining transmission spikes at z > 5 with those obtained from mock absorption spectra from the Sherwoodand Sherwood–Relics simulation suites of hydrodynamical simulations of the intergalactic medium (IGM). We use a profile-fitting procedure for the inverted transmitted flux, 1 − F, similar to the widely used Voigt profile fitting of the transmitted flux F at lower redshifts, to characterize the transmission spikes that probe predominately underdense regions of the IGM. We are able to reproduce the width and height distributions of the transmission spikes, both with optically thin simulations of the post-reionization Universe using a homogeneous UV background and full radiative transfer simulations of a late reionization model. We find that the width of the fitted components of the simulated transmission spikes is very sensitive to the instantaneous temperature of the reionized IGM. The internal structures of the spikes are more prominent in low temperature models of the IGM. The width distribution of the observed transmission spikes, which require high spectral resolution (≤ 8  km s−1) to be resolved, is reproduced for optically thin simulations with a temperature at mean density of T0 = (11 000 ± 1600, 10 500 ± 2100, 12 000 ± 2200) K at z = (5.4, 5.6, 5.8). This is weakly dependent on the slope of the temperature-density relation, which is favoured to be moderately steeper than isothermal. In the inhomogeneous, late reionization, full radiative transfer simulations where islands of neutral hydrogen persist to z ∼ 5.3, the width distribution of the observed transmission spikes is consistent with the range of T0 caused by spatial fluctuations in the temperature–density relation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 498 (1) ◽  
pp. 373-384
Author(s):  
Michael Pagano ◽  
Adrian Liu

ABSTRACT The epoch of reionization (EoR) – when neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium was systematically ionized – is a period in our Universe’s history that is currently poorly understood. However, a key prediction of most models is a correlation between the density and ionization field during the EoR. This has consequences for the 21-cm power spectrum. Here, we propose a parametrization for the density-ionization correlation and study the dependence of the 21-cm power spectrum on this parametrization. We use this formalism to forecast the ability of current and future observations to constrain these correlations. We find that upper limits on the dimensionless power spectrum at redshifts 7.5 < z < 8.5 using k bins between $0.1 \lt k \lt 0.75\, \textrm {Mpc}^{-1}$ with error bars at the level of ${\sim\! }20\, \textrm {mK}^2$ about our fiducial model would rule out uncorrelated reionization at $99{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ credibility. Beyond upper limits, we find that at its full sensitivity, the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) will be able to place strong constraints on the sign and magnitude of density-ionization correlations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 504 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Gong-Bo Zhao ◽  
Yuting Wang ◽  
Atsushi Taruya ◽  
Weibing Zhang ◽  
Héctor Gil-Marín ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We perform a joint BAO and RSD analysis using the eBOSS DR16 LRG and ELG samples in the redshift range of z ∈ [0.6, 1.1], and detect an RSD signal from the cross-power spectrum at a ∼4σ confidence level, i.e., fσ8 = 0.317 ± 0.080 at zeff = 0.77. Based on the chained power spectrum, which is a new development in this work to mitigate the angular systematics, we measure the BAO distances and growth rate simultaneously at two effective redshifts, namely, DM/rd (z = 0.70) = 17.96 ± 0.51, DH/rd (z = 0.70) = 21.22 ± 1.20, fσ8 (z = 0.70) = 0.43 ± 0.05, and DM/rd (z = 0.845) = 18.90 ± 0.78, DH/rd (z = 0.845) = 20.91 ± 2.86, fσ8 (z = 0.845) = 0.30 ± 0.08. Combined with BAO measurements including those from the eBOSS DR16 QSO and Lyman-α sample, our measurement has raised the significance level of a non-zero ΩΛ to ∼11σ. The data product of this work is publicly available at https://github.com/icosmology/eBOSS_DR16_LRGxELG and https://www.sdss.org/science/final-bao-and-rsd-measurements/.


Author(s):  
Srijita Pal ◽  
Somnath Bharadwaj ◽  
Abhik Ghosh ◽  
Samir Choudhuri

Abstract We apply the Tapered Gridded Estimator (TGE) for estimating the cosmological 21-cm power spectrum from 150 MHz GMRT observations which corresponds to the neutral hydrogen (HI) at redshift z = 8.28. Here TGE is used to measure the Multi-frequency Angular Power Spectrum (MAPS) Cℓ(Δν) first, from which we estimate the 21-cm power spectrum P(k⊥, k∥). The data here are much too small for a detection, and the aim is to demonstrate the capabilities of the estimator. We find that the estimated power spectrum is consistent with the expected foreground and noise behaviour. This demonstrates that this estimator correctly estimates the noise bias and subtracts this out to yield an unbiased estimate of the power spectrum. More than $47\%$ of the frequency channels had to be discarded from the data owing to radio-frequency interference, however the estimated power spectrum does not show any artifacts due to missing channels. Finally, we show that it is possible to suppress the foreground contribution by tapering the sky response at large angular separations from the phase center. We combine the k modes within a rectangular region in the ‘EoR window’ to obtain the spherically binned averaged dimensionless power spectra Δ2(k) along with the statistical error σ associated with the measured Δ2(k). The lowest k-bin yields Δ2(k) = (61.47)2 K2 at k = 1.59 Mpc−1, with σ = (27.40)2 K2. We obtain a 2 σ upper limit of (72.66)2 K2 on the mean squared HI 21-cm brightness temperature fluctuations at k = 1.59 Mpc−1.


2020 ◽  
Vol 499 (2) ◽  
pp. 2598-2607
Author(s):  
Mike (Shengbo) Wang ◽  
Florian Beutler ◽  
David Bacon

ABSTRACT Relativistic effects in clustering observations have been shown to introduce scale-dependent corrections to the galaxy overdensity field on large scales, which may hamper the detection of primordial non-Gaussianity fNL through the scale-dependent halo bias. The amplitude of relativistic corrections depends not only on the cosmological background expansion, but also on the redshift evolution and sensitivity to the luminosity threshold of the tracer population being examined, as parametrized by the evolution bias be and magnification bias s. In this work, we propagate luminosity function measurements from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) to be and s for the quasar (QSO) sample, and thereby derive constraints on relativistic corrections to its power spectrum multipoles. Although one could mitigate the impact on the fNL signature by adjusting the redshift range or the luminosity threshold of the tracer sample being considered, we suggest that, for future surveys probing large cosmic volumes, relativistic corrections should be forward modelled from the tracer luminosity function including its uncertainties. This will be important to quasar clustering measurements on scales $k \sim 10^{-3}\, h\, {\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ in upcoming surveys such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), where relativistic corrections can overwhelm the expected fNL signature at low redshifts z ≲ 1 and become comparable to fNL ≃ 1 in the power spectrum quadrupole at redshifts z ≳ 2.5.


2020 ◽  
Vol 497 (1) ◽  
pp. 572-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shivan Khullar ◽  
Qingbo Ma ◽  
Philipp Busch ◽  
Benedetta Ciardi ◽  
Marius B Eide ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The hyperfine transition of 3He+ at 3.5 cm has been thought as a probe of the high-z IGM, since it offers a unique insight into the evolution of the helium component of the gas, as well as potentially give an independent constraint on the 21 cm signal from neutral hydrogen. In this paper, we use radiative transfer simulations of reionization driven by sources such as stars, X-ray binaries, accreting black holes and shock heated interstellar medium, and simulations of a high-z quasar to characterize the signal and analyse its prospects of detection. We find that the peak of the signal lies in the range ∼1–50 μK for both environments, but while around the quasar it is always in emission, in the case of cosmic reionization a brief period of absorption is expected. As the evolution of He ii is determined by stars, we find that it is not possible to distinguish reionization histories driven by more energetic sources. On the other hand, while a bright QSO produces a signal in 21 cm that is very similar to the one from a large collection of galaxies, its signature in 3.5 cm is very peculiar and could be a powerful probe to identify the presence of the QSO. We analyse the prospects of the signal’s detectability using SKA1-mid as our reference telescope. We find that the noise power spectrum dominates over the power spectrum of the signal, although a modest signal-to-noise ratio can be obtained when the wavenumber bin width and the survey volume are sufficiently large.


2019 ◽  
Vol 486 (1) ◽  
pp. 769-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vikram Khaire ◽  
Michael Walther ◽  
Joseph F Hennawi ◽  
Jose Oñorbe ◽  
Zarija Lukić ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We present new measurements of the flux power-spectrum P(k) of the z < 0.5 H  i Lyman-α Forest spanning scales $k \sim 0.001\!-\!0.1\, \mathrm{s \, km}^{-1}$. These results were derived from 65 far-ultraviolet quasar spectra (resolution $R \sim 18\, 000$) observed with the Cosmic Origin Spectrograph (COS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope. The analysis required careful masking of all contaminating, coincident absorption from H  i and metal–line transitions of the Galactic interstellar medium and intervening absorbers as well as proper treatment of the complex COS line-spread function. From the P(k) measurements, we estimate the H  i photoionization rate ($\Gamma _{\rm H\,{\small I}}$) in the z < 0.5 intergalactic medium. Our results confirm most of the previous $\Gamma _{\rm H\,{\small I}}$ estimates. We conclude that previous concerns of a photon underproduction crisis are now resolved by demonstrating that the measured $\Gamma _{\rm H\,{\small I}}$ can be accounted for by ultraviolet emission from quasars alone. In a companion paper, we will present constraints on the thermal state of the z < 0.5 intergalactic medium from the P(k) measurements presented here.


1985 ◽  
Vol 106 ◽  
pp. 321-322
Author(s):  
J. Crovisier ◽  
J. M. Dickey

The small-scale structure of galactic neutral hydrogen may be statistically described by the spatial power spectrum of the 21-cm line. This latter may be readily observed by interferometer arrays since it is the squared modulus of the visibility function. We have observed the , region with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (Crovisier and Dickey, 1983). Brightness fluctuations of the 21-cm line were detected in this region on scales as small as 1.7 arcmin (corresponding to less than 5 pc). The Westerbork observations, combined with single-dish observations made at Nançay and Arecibo, allow determination of the spatial power spectrum over a dynamic range of about 106 in intensity. The spectrum follows roughly a power law with indices ~ −3 to −2. An interpretation in terms of the turbulence spectrum is proposed by Dickey (1985).


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