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Register a new userNeutral island statistics during reionization from 21-cm tomography
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We present the prospects of extracting information about the Epoch of Reionization by identifying the remaining neutral regions, referred to as islands, in tomographic observations of the redshifted 21-cm signal. Using simulated data sets we show that at late times the 21-cm power spectrum is fairly insensitive to the details of the reionization process but that the properties of the neutral islands can distinguish between different reionization scenarios. We compare the properties of these islands with those of ionized bubbles. At equivalent volume filling fractions, neutral islands tend to be fewer in number but larger compared to the ionized bubbles. In addition, the evolution of the size distribution of neutral islands is found to be slower than that of the ionized bubbles and also their percolation behaviour differs substantially. Even though the neutral islands are relatively rare, they will be easier to identify in observations with the low-frequency component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA-Low) due to their larger size and the lower noise levels at lower redshifts. The size distribution of neutral islands at the late stages of reionization is found to depend on the source properties, such as the ionizing efficiency of the sources and their minimum mass. We find the longest line of sight through a neutral region to be more than 100 comoving Mpc until very late stages (90-95 per cent reionized), which may have relevance for the long absorption trough at $z=5.6-5.8$ in the spectrum of quasar ULAS J0148+0600.
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The upcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA-Low) will map the distribution of neutral hydrogen during reionization, and produce a tremendous amount of 3D tomographic data. These images cubes will be subject to instrumental limitations, such as noise and limited resolution. Here we present SegU-Net, a stable and reliable method for identification of neutral and ionized regions in these images. SegU-Net is a U-Net architecture based convolutional neural network (CNN) for image segmentation. It is capable of segmenting our image data into meaningful features (ionized and neutral regions) with greater accuracy compared to previous methods. We can estimate the true ionization history from our mock observation of SKA with an observation time of 1000 h with more than 87 per cent accuracy. We also show that SegU-Net can be used to recover various topological summary statistics, such as size distributions and Betti numbers, with a relative difference of only a few per cent. These summary statistics characterise the non-Gaussian nature of the reionization process.
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The properties of the first galaxies, expected to drive the Cosmic Dawn (CD) and the Epoch of Reionization (EoR), are encoded in the 3D structure of the cosmic 21-cm signal. Parameter inference from upcoming 21-cm observations promises to revolutionize our understanding of these unseen galaxies. However, prior inference was done using models with several simplifying assumptions. Here we introduce a flexible, physically-motivated parametrization for high-$z$ galaxy properties, implementing it in the public code 21cmFAST. In particular, we allow their star formation rates and ionizing escape fraction to scale with the masses of their host dark matter halos, and directly compute inhomogeneous, sub-grid recombinations in the intergalactic medium. Combining current Hubble observations of the rest-frame UV luminosity function (UV LFs) at high-$z$ with a mock 1000h 21-cm observation using the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Arrays (HERA), we constrain the parameters of our model using a Monte Carlo Markov Chain sampler of 3D simulations, 21CMMC. We show that the amplitude and scaling of the stellar mass with halo mass is strongly constrained by LF observations, while the remaining galaxy properties are constrained mainly by 21-cm observations. The two data sets compliment each other quite well, mitigating degeneracies intrinsic to each observation. All eight of our astrophysical parameters are able to be constrained at the level of $sim 10%$ or better. The updat
Measurements of the post-reionization 21-cm bispectrum $B_{{rm HI}}(mathbf{k_1},mathbf{k_2},mathbf{k_3})$ using various upcoming intensity mapping experiments hold the potential for determining the cosmological parameters at a high level of precision. In this paper we have estimated the 21-cm bispectrum in the $z$ range $1 le z le 6$ using semi-numerical simulations of the neutral hydrogen (${rm HI}$) distribution. We determine the $k$ and $z$ range where the 21-cm bispectrum can be adequately modelled using the predictions of second order perturbation theory, and we use this to predict the redshift evolution of the linear and quadratic ${rm HI}$ bias parameters $b_1$ and $b_2$ respectively. The $b_1$ values are found to decreases nearly linearly with decreasing $z$, and are in good agreement with earlier predictions obtained by modelling the 21-cm power spectrum $P_{{rm HI}}(k)$. The $b_2$ values fall sharply with decreasing $z$, becomes zero at $z sim 3$ and attains a nearly constant value $b_2 approx - 0.36$ at $z<2$. We provide polynomial fitting formulas for $b_1$ and $b_2$ as functions of $z$. The modelling presented here is expected to be useful in future efforts to determine cosmological parameters and constrain primordial non-Gaussianity using the 21-cm bispectrum.
Experiments designed to measure the redshifted 21~cm line from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) are challenged by strong astrophysical foreground contamination, ionospheric distortions, complex instrumental response and other different types of noise (e.g. radio frequency interference). The astrophysical foregrounds are dominated by diffuse synchrotron emission from our Galaxy. Here we present a simulation of the Galactic emission used as a foreground module for the LOFAR- EoR key science project end-to-end simulations. The simulation produces total and polarized intensity over $10^circ times 10^circ$ maps of the Galactic synchrotron and free-free emission, including all observed characteristics of the emission: spatial fluctuations of amplitude and spectral index of the synchrotron emission, together with Faraday rotation effects. The importance of these simulations arise from the fact that the Galactic polarized emission could behave in a manner similar to the EoR signal along the frequency direction. As a consequence, an improper instrumental calibration will give rise to leakages of the polarized to the total signal and mask the desired EoR signal. In this paper we address this for the first time through realistic simulations.
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