No Arabic abstract
21cm emission from residual neutral hydrogen after the epoch of reionization can be used to trace the cosmological power spectrum of density fluctuations. Using a Fisher matrix formulation, we provide a detailed forecast of the constraints on cosmological parameters that are achievable with this probe. We consider two designs: a scaled-up version of the MWA observatory as well as a Fast Fourier Transform Telescope. We find that 21cm observations dedicated to post-reionization redshifts may yield significantly better constraints than next generation Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments. We find the constraints on $Omega_Lambda$, $Omega_{rm m}h^2$, and $Omega_ u h^2$ to be the strongest, each improved by at least an order of magnitude over the Planck CMB satellite alone for both designs. Our results do not depend as strongly on uncertainties in the astrophysics associated with the ionization of hydrogen as similar 21cm surveys during the epoch of reionization. However, we find that modulation of the 21cm power spectrum from the ionizing background could potentially degrade constraints on the spectral index of the primordial power spectrum and its running by more than an order of magnitude. Our results also depend strongly on the maximum wavenumber of the power spectrum which can be used due to non-linearities.
We discuss the 21cm power spectrum (PS) following the completion of reionization. In contrast to the reionization era, this PS is proportional to the PS of mass density fluctuations, with only a small modulation due to fluctuations in the ionization field on scales larger than the mean-free-path of ionizing photons. We derive the form of this modulation, and demonstrate that its effect on the 21cm PS will be smaller than 1% for physically plausible models of damped Ly-alpha systems. In contrast to the 21cm PS observed prior to reionization, in which HII regions dominate the ionization structure, the simplicity of the 21cm PS after reionization will enhance its utility as a cosmological probe by removing the need to separate the PS into physical and astrophysical components. As a demonstration, we consider the Alcock-Paczynski test and show that the next generation of low-frequency arrays could measure the angular distortion of the PS at the percent level for z~3-5.
We study the constraints that high-redshift structure formation in the universe places on warm dark matter (WDM) dominated cosmological models. We modify the extended Press-Schechter formalism to derive the halo mass function in WDM models. We show that our predictions agree with recent numerical simulations at low redshift over the halo masses of interest. Applying our model to galaxy formation at high redshift, we find that the loss of power on small scales, together with the delayed collapse of low-mass objects, results in strong limits on the root-mean-square velocity dispersion v_rms of the WDM particles at z=0. For fermions decoupling while relativistic, these limits are equivalent to constraints on the mass m_X of the particles. The presence of a 4 billion solar mass black hole at z=5.8, believed to power the quasar SDSS 1044-1215, implies m_X > 0.5 keV (or v_rms < 0.10 km/s), assuming that the quasar is unlensed and radiating at or below the Eddington limit. Reionization by z=5.8 also implies a limit on m_X. If high-redshift galaxies produce ionizing photons with an efficiency similar to their z=3 counterparts, we find m_X > 1.2 keV (or v_rms < 0.03 km/s). However, given the uncertainties in current measurements from the proximity effect of the ionizing background at redshift 3, values of m_X as low as 0.75 keV (v_rms = 0.06 km/s) are not ruled out. The limit weakens further if, instead, the ionizing-photon production efficiency is greater at high z, but this limit will tighten considerably if reionization is shown in the future to have occurred at higher redshifts. WDM models with m_X < 1 keV (v_rms > 0.04 km/s) produce a low-luminosity cutoff in the high-redshift galaxy luminosity function which is directly detectable with the Next Generation Space Telescope (abridged).
We forecast constraints on neutral hydrogen (HI) and cosmological parameters using near-term intensity mapping surveys with instruments such as BINGO, MeerKAT, and the SKA, and Stage III and IV optical galaxy surveys. If foregrounds and systematic effects can be controlled - a problem which becomes much easier in cross-correlation - these surveys will provide exquisite measurements of the HI density and bias, as well as measurements of the growth of structure, the angular diameter distance, and the Hubble rate, over a wide range of redshift. We also investigate the possibility of detecting the late time ISW effect using the Planck satellite and forthcoming intensity mapping surveys, finding that a large sky survey with Phase 1 of the SKA can achieve a near optimal detection.
In this paper, we report new limits on 21cm emission from cosmic reionization based on a 135-day observing campaign with a 64-element deployment of the Donald C. Backer Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER) in South Africa. This work extends the work presented in Parsons et al. (2014) with more collecting area, a longer observing period, improved redundancy-based calibration, optimal fringe-rate filtering, and improved power-spectral analysis using optimal quadratic estimators. The result is a new $2sigma$ upper limit on $Delta^{2}(k)$ of (22.4 mK)$^2$ in the range $0.15 < k < 0.5h {rm Mpc}^{-1}$ at $z = 8.4$. This represents a three-fold improvement over the previous best upper limit. As we discuss in more depth in a forthcoming paper (Pober et al. 2015, in prep), this upper limit supports and extends previous evidence against extremely cold reionization scenarios. We conclude with a discussion of implications for future 21cm reionization experiments, including the newly funded Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA). $textbf{The limits presented in this paper have been retracted: The erratum can be found in Appendix A.}$
We present a deep machine learning (ML)-based technique for accurately determining $sigma_8$ and $Omega_m$ from mock 3D galaxy surveys. The mock surveys are built from the AbacusCosmos suite of $N$-body simulations, which comprises 40 cosmological volume simulations spanning a range of cosmological models, and we account for uncertainties in galaxy formation scenarios through the use of generalized halo occupation distributions (HODs). We explore a trio of ML models: a 3D convolutional neural network (CNN), a power-spectrum-based fully connected network, and a hybrid approach that merges the two to combine physically motivated summary statistics with flexible CNNs. We describe best practices for training a deep model on a suite of matched-phase simulations and we test our model on a completely independent sample that uses previously unseen initial conditions, cosmological parameters, and HOD parameters. Despite the fact that the mock observations are quite small ($sim0.07h^{-3},mathrm{Gpc}^3$) and the training data span a large parameter space (6 cosmological and 6 HOD parameters), the CNN and hybrid CNN can constrain $sigma_8$ and $Omega_m$ to $sim3%$ and $sim4%$, respectively.