English

Probing the Intergalactic Medium with Ly$\mathrm{\alpha}$ and 21 cm Fluctuations

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2017-10-18 v2

Abstract

We study 21cm and Lyα\mathrm{\alpha} fluctuations, as well as Hα\mathrm{\alpha}, while distinguishing between Lyα\mathrm{\alpha} 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 21\,cm and Lyα\mathrm{\alpha}, which displays a characteristic morphology and a turnover from negative to positive correlation at scales of a couple Mpc1^{-1}. 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 21\,cm and Hα\mathrm{\alpha} cross-correlation signal to determine the relative strength of galactic and IGM emission in Lyα\mathrm{\alpha}. We conclude by showing the detectability of the 21\,cm and Lyα\mathrm{\alpha} 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 Lyα\mathrm{\alpha} damping tail and 21cm foreground avoidance in the modeling.

Keywords

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

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