arXivDaily arXiv每日学术速递 周一至周五更新
arXiv 1601.03058astro-ph.CO
收藏

从全球21厘米计及宇宙加热的信号精确测量再电离光学厚度

Precise Measurement of the Reionization Optical Depth from The Global 21-cm Signal Accounting for Cosmic Heating

Anastasia Fialkov, Abraham Loeb

摘要:

由于我们有限的再电离数据,电子散射的总光学深度,$τ$,限制了精确测量宇宙学参数的宇宙微波背景(CMB)。最近的研究表明,假设中性气体在整个再电离时期比CMB热得多,预测的中性氢21厘米信号包含足够的信息来重建$τ$,其精度低于%。在这里,我们放松这一假设,并使用全球21厘米的信号单独提取$τ$的现实X射线加热的情况。我们测试我们的模型独立的方法,使用模拟数据的电离和加热的历史范围很广,并表明,在一个子百分比水平的再电离光学深度的准确测量是可能的,在大多数考虑的情况下,即使当加热不饱和在再电离的时代,假设前景得到缓解。然而,我们发现,在热源具有硬X射线光谱并且其亮度接近或低于基于低红移观测的预测的情况下,单独的全球21厘米信号并不是再电离历史的良好示踪剂。

英文摘要:

As a result of our limited data on reionization, the total optical depth for electron scattering, $τ$, limits precision measurements of cosmological parameters from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). It was recently shown that the predicted 21-cm signal of neutral hydrogen contains enough information to reconstruct $τ$ with sub-percent accuracy, assuming that the neutral gas was much hotter than the CMB throughout the entire epoch of reionization. Here we relax this assumption and use the global 21-cm signal alone to extract $τ$ for realistic X-ray heating scenarios. We test our model-independent approach using mock data for a wide range of ionization and heating histories and show that an accurate measurement of the reionization optical depth at a sub-percent level is possible in most of the considered scenarios even when heating is not saturated during the epoch of reionization, assuming that the foregrounds are mitigated. However, we find that in cases where heating sources had hard X-ray spectra and their luminosity was close to or lower than what is predicted based on low-redshift observations, the global 21-cm signal alone is not a good tracer of the reionization history.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

↑