Cosmology from the Highly-Redshifted 21 cm Line

Abstract

One of the next decade's most exciting prospects is to explore the cosmic "dark ages," during which the first stars in the Universe formed, with the 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen. At z>6, this light redshifts into the low-frequency radio regime and can be observed with new generations of wide-field arrays. These experiments have the potential to observe enormous volumes and to improve both cosmological and astrophysical constraints dramatically. In this white paper, we describe how the next decade will see the first steps toward unlocking this potential, allowing us to answer two key questions about the fundamental physics of our Universe and the intergalactic medium: Does the standard cosmological model describe the Universe during the "dark ages?" How did the intergalactic medium evolve during this important time, ending with the reionization of hydrogen?

8 pages, 5 figures, science white paper submitted to the US Astro2010 Decadal Survey "Cosmology and Fundamental Physics" Science Frontier Panel

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Fundamental Physics with the Square Kilometre Array
• Precision Calibration of Radio Interferometers Using Redundant Baselines
• The Future of Primordial Features with 21 cm Tomography
• Statistics of the epoch of reionization (EoR) 21-cm signal -- II. The evolution of the power spectrum error-covariance
• Towards simulating and quantifying the light-cone EoR 21-cm signal
• Testing Inflation and Curvaton Scenarios with CMB Distortions
• Measuring the Redshift of Reionization with a Modest Array of Low-Frequency Dipoles
• Effects of thermal inflation on small scale density perturbations
• Small-scale Effects of Thermal Inflation on Halo Abundance at High-$z$, Galaxy Substructure Abundance and 21-cm Power Spectrum
• Bias-Limited Extraction of Cosmological Parameters
• Redshifted 21-cm Signals in the Dark Ages