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This paper introduces the Hidden Valley simulations, a set of trillion-particle N-body simulations in gigaparsec volumes aimed at intensity mapping science. We present details of the simulations and their convergence, then specialize to the study of 21-cm fluctuations between redshifts 2 and 6. Neutral hydrogen is assigned to halos using three prescriptions, and we investigate the clustering in real and redshift-space at the 2-point level. In common with earlier work we find the bias of HI increases from near 2 at z = 2 to 4 at z = 6, becoming more scale dependent at high z. The level of scale-dependence and decorrelation with the matter field are as predicted by perturbation theory. Due to the low mass of the hosting halos, the impact of fingers of god is small on the range relevant for proposed 21-cm instruments. We show that baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift-space distortions could be well measured by such instruments. Taking advantage of the large simulation volume, we assess the impact of fluctuations in the ultraviolet background, which change HI clustering primarily at large scales.
By means of zoom-in hydrodynamic simulations we quantify the amount of neutral hydrogen (HI) hosted by groups and clusters of galaxies. Our simulations, which are based on an improved formulation of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), include radiative cooling, star formation, metal enrichment and supernova feedback, and can be split in two different groups, depending on whether feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) is turned on or off. Simulations are analyzed to account for HI self-shielding and the presence of molecular hydrogen. We find that the mass in neutral hydrogen of dark matter halos monotonically increases with the halo mass and can be well described by a power-law of the form $M_{rm HI}(M,z)propto M^{3/4}$. Our results point out that AGN feedback reduces both the total halo mass and its HI mass, although it is more efficient in removing HI. We conclude that AGN feedback reduces the neutral hydrogen mass of a given halo by $sim50%$, with a weak dependence on halo mass and redshift. The spatial distribution of neutral hydrogen within halos is also affected by AGN feedback, whose effect is to decrease the fraction of HI that resides in the halo inner regions. By extrapolating our results to halos not resolved in our simulations we derive astrophysical implications from the measurements of $Omega_{rm HI}(z)$: halos with circular velocities larger than $sim25~{rm km/s}$ are needed to host HI in order to reproduce observations. We find that only the model with AGN feedback is capable of reproducing the value of $Omega_{rm HI}b_{rm HI}$ derived from available 21cm intensity mapping observations.
The large-scale distribution of neutral hydrogen in the Universe will be luminous through its 21 cm emission. Here, for the first time, we use the auto-power spectrum of 21 cm intensity fluctuations to constrain neutral hydrogen fluctuations at z~0.8. Our data were acquired with the Green Bank Telescope and span the redshift range 0.6 < z < 1 over two fields totalling ~41 deg. sq. and 190 h of radio integration time. The dominant synchrotron foregrounds exceed the signal by ~10^3, but have fewer degrees of freedom and can be removed efficiently. Even in the presence of residual foregrounds, the auto-power can still be interpreted as an upper bound on the 21 cm signal. Our previous measurements of the cross-correlation of 21 cm intensity and the WiggleZ galaxy survey provide a lower bound. Through a Bayesian treatment of signal and foregrounds, we can combine both fields in auto- and cross-power into a measurement of Omega_HI b_HI = [0.62^{+0.23}_{-0.15}] * 10^{-3} at 68% confidence with 9% systematic calibration uncertainty, where Omega_HI is the neutral hydrogen (HI) fraction and b_HI is the HI bias parameter. We describe observational challenges with the present data set and plans to overcome them.
HI intensity mapping is an emerging tool to probe dark energy. Observations of the redshifted HI signal will be contaminated by instrumental noise, atmospheric and Galactic foregrounds. The latter is expected to be four orders of magnitude brighter than the HI emission we wish to detect. We present a simulation of single-dish observations including an instrumental noise model with 1/f and white noise, and sky emission with a diffuse Galactic foreground and HI emission. We consider two foreground cleaning methods: spectral parametric fitting and principal component analysis. For a smooth frequency spectrum of the foreground and instrumental effects, we find that the parametric fitting method provides residuals that are still contaminated by foreground and 1/f noise, but the principal component analysis can remove this contamination down to the thermal noise level. This method is robust for a range of different models of foreground and noise, and so constitutes a promising way to recover the HI signal from the data. However, it induces a leakage of the cosmological signal into the subtracted foreground of around 5%. The efficiency of the component separation methods depends heavily on the smoothness of the frequency spectrum of the foreground and the 1/f noise. We find that as, long as the spectral variations over the band are slow compared to the channel width, the foreground cleaning method still works.
This white paper envisions a revolutionary post-DESI, post-LSST dark energy program based on intensity mapping of the redshifted 21cm emission line from neutral hydrogen at radio frequencies. The proposed intensity mapping survey has the unique capability to quadruple the volume of the Universe surveyed by optical programs, provide a percent-level measurement of the expansion history to $z sim 6$, open a window to explore physics beyond the concordance $Lambda$CDM model, and to significantly improve the precision on standard cosmological parameters. In addition, characterization of dark energy and new physics will be powerfully enhanced by cross-correlations with optical surveys and cosmic microwave background measurements. The rich dataset obtained by the proposed intensity mapping instrument will be simultaneously useful in exploring the time-domain physics of fast radio transients and pulsars, potentially in live multi-messenger coincidence with other observatories. The core dark energy/inflation science advances enabled by this program are the following: (i) Measure the expansion history of the universe over $z=0.3-6$ with a single instrument, extending the range deep into the pre-acceleration era, providing an unexplored window for new physics; (ii) Measure the growth rate of structure in the universe over the same redshift range; (iii) Observe, or constrain, the presence of inflationary relics in the primordial power spectrum, improving existing constraints by an order of magnitude; (iv) Observe, or constrain, primordial non-Gaussianity with unprecedented precision, improving constraints on several key numbers by an order of magnitude. Detailed mapping of the enormous, and still largely unexplored, volume of cosmic space will thus provide unprecedented information on fundamental questions of the vacuum energy and early-universe physics.
We examine the global HI properties of galaxies in quarter-billion particle cosmological simulations using Gadget-2, focusing on how galactic outflows impact HI content. We consider four outflow models, including a new one (ezw) motivated by recent interstellar medium simulations in which the wind speed and mass loading factor scale as expected for momentum-driven outflows for larger galaxies and energy-driven outflows for dwarfs (sigma<75 km/s). To obtain predicted HI masses, we employ a simple but effective local correction for particle self-shielding, and an observationally-constrained transition from neutral to molecular hydrogen. Our ezw simulation produces an HI mass function whose faint-end slope of -1.3 agrees well with observations from the ALFALFA survey; other models agree less well. Satellite galaxies have a bimodal distribution in HI fraction versus halo mass, with smaller satellites and/or those in larger halos more often being HI-deficient. At a given stellar mass, HI content correlates with star formation rate and inversely correlates with metallicity, as expected if driven by stochasticity in the accretion rate. To higher redshifts, massive HI galaxies disappear and the mass function steepens. The global cosmic HI density conspires to remain fairly constant from z~5-0, but the relative contribution from smaller galaxies increases with redshift.