Probing the Intergalactic Medium with Ly$\mathrm{\alpha}$ and 21 cm Fluctuations
Abstract
We study 21cm and Ly fluctuations, as well as H, while distinguishing between Ly emission of galactic, diffuse, and scattered intergalactic medium (IGM) origin. Cross-correlation information about the state of the IGM is obtained, testing neutral versus ionized medium cases with different tracers in a seminumerical simulation setup. In order to pave the way toward constraints on reionization history and modeling beyond power spectrum information, we explore parameter dependencies of the cross-power signal between 21cm and Ly, which displays a characteristic morphology and a turnover from negative to positive correlation at scales of a couple Mpc. In a proof of concept for the extraction of further information on the state of the IGM using different tracers, we demonstrate the use of the 21cm and H cross-correlation signal to determine the relative strength of galactic and IGM emission in Ly. We conclude by showing the detectability of the 21cm and Ly cross-correlation signal over more than one decade in scale at high signal-to-noise ratio for upcoming probes like SKA and the proposed all-sky intensity mapping satellites SPHEREx and CDIM, while also including the Ly damping tail and 21cm foreground avoidance in the modeling.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1611.09682,
title = {Probing the Intergalactic Medium with Ly$\mathrm{\alpha}$ and 21 cm Fluctuations},
author = {Caroline Heneka and Asantha Cooray and Chang Feng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.09682},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
26 pages, 18 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ