Constraining the unexplored period between the dark ages and reionization with observations of the global 21 cm signal

By J. Pritchard, Abraham Loeb. 2010

142 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Observations of the frequency dependence of the global brightness temperature of the redshifted 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen may be possible with single dipole experiments. In this paper, we develop a Fisher matrix formalism for calculating the sensitivity of such instruments to the 21 cm signal from reionization and the dark ages. We show that rapid reionization histories with duration {Delta}z < or approx. 2 can be constrained, provided that local foregrounds can be well modeled by low order polynomials. It is then shown that observations in the range {nu}=50-100 MHz can feasibly constrain the Ly{alpha} and x-ray emissivity of the first stars forming at z{approx}15-25, provided that systematic temperature residuals can be controlled to less than 1 mK. Finally, we demonstrate the difficulty of detecting the 21 cm signal from the dark ages before star formation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f54d2a0755936c4b285f9fa369e0c95030d56506

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

The GMRT Epoch of Reionization experiment: a new upper limit on the neutral hydrogen power spectrum at z≈ 8.6 (2010, background): “A general parametrization of these scenarios was recently proposed by Pritchard & Loeb (2010).”
Probing the first stars and black holes in the early Universe with the Dark Ages Radio Explorer (DARE) (2008, methodology): “01 are considered, and their X-ray luminosity is varied by a factor of 100 on either side of the reference model (which is calibrated to the X-ray emissivity of nearby galaxies; Pritchard and Loeb, 2010).”
Stellar black holes at the dawn of the universe (2011, methodology): “(averaged over the entire sky) as a function of redshift following the same prescriptions as in Pritchard & Loeb (2010), again for the same three models with different values of fX.”
COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND CONSTRAINTS ON THE DURATION AND TIMING OF REIONIZATION FROM THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE (2011, unknown): “Our results are good news for upcoming experiments that hope to detect a redshifted 21 cm absorption feature sourced by substantial UV coupling prior to Xray heating during the onset of reionization (Pritchard & Loeb 2010; Bowman et al. 2008b,a; Burns et al. 2012; Harker et al. 2012).”
Reionization and the Cosmic Dawn with the Square Kilometre Array (2012, background): “The positions of the various turning points would pin down the redshifts when the first galaxies and X-ray sources form and when reionization began and ended (Furlanetto 2006b; Pritchard & Loeb 2010).”
On the detection of a cosmic dawn signal in the radio background (2021, methodology): “We estimate the robustness of inference about the profile based on corrections in equation (4).”
21 cm cosmology in the 21st century (2011, methodology): “Such estimates show that global 21 cm experiments should be able to constrain realistic reionization models with z 2 [97, 98].”