Towards a complete treatment of the cosmological recombination problem

Abstract

A new approach to the cosmological recombination problem is presented, which completes our previous analysis on the effects of two-photon processes during the epoch of cosmological hydrogen recombination, accounting for ns-1s and nd-1s Raman events and two-photon transitions from levels with n>=2. The recombination problem for hydrogen is described using an effective 400-shell multi-level approach, to which we subsequently add all important recombination corrections discussed in the literature thus far. We explicitly solve the radiative transfer equation of the Lyman-series photon field to obtain the required modifications to the rate equations of the resolved levels. In agreement with earlier computations we find that 2s-1s Raman scattering leads to a delay in recombination by DN_e/N_e~0.9% at z~920. Two-photon decay and Raman scattering from higher levels (n>3) result in a small additional modifications, and precise results can be obtained when including their effect for the first 3-5 shells. This work is a major step towards a new cosmological recombination code (CosmoRec) that supersedes the physical model included in Recfast, and which, owing to its short runtime, can be used in the analysis of future CMB data from the Planck Surveyor.

17 pages, 8 figures, minor typos corrected, accepted by MNRAS, CosmoRec available at http://www.Chluba.de/CosmoRec

References in corpus (14)

• Ultrafast effective multi-level atom method for primordial hydrogen recombination
• How well do we understand cosmological recombination?
• Lines in the cosmic microwave background spectrum from the epoch of cosmological helium recombination
• Primordial helium recombination I: feedback, line transfer, and continuum opacity
• Free-bound emission from cosmological hydrogen recombination
• Two-photon transitions in hydrogen and cosmological recombination
• Two-photon transitions in primordial hydrogen recombination
• The effect of forbidden transitions on cosmological hydrogen and helium recombination
• Two-Photon 2s<->1s Transitions during Recombination of Hydrogen in the Universe
• From Cavendish to PLANCK: Constraining Newton's Gravitational Constant with CMB Temperature and Polarization Anisotropy
• Cosmological hydrogen recombination: Lyn line feedback and continuum escape
• Primordial helium recombination II: two-photon processes
• Time-Dependent Corrections to the Ly-alpha Escape Probability During Cosmological Hydrogen Recombination
• Virtual Resonant States in Two-Photon Decay Processes: Lower-Order Terms, Subtractions, and Physical Interpretations

Cited by in corpus (100)

• Indirect Dark Matter Signatures in the Cosmic Dark Ages I. Generalizing the Bound on s-wave Dark Matter Annihilation from Planck
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cosmological parameters from three seasons of data
• CMB bounds on disk-accreting massive Primordial Black Holes
• Probing the inflaton: Small-scale power spectrum constraints from measurements of the CMB energy spectrum
• Indirect Dark Matter Signatures in the Cosmic Dark Ages II. Ionization, Heating and Photon Production from Arbitrary Energy Injections
• Cosmological constraints on exotic injection of electromagnetic energy
• Searching for Dark Matter in the CMB: A Compact Parameterization of Energy Injection from New Physics
• A Critical Assessment of CMB Limits on Dark Matter-Baryon Scattering: New Treatment of the Relative Bulk Velocity
• Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Inflation
• The Global 21-cm Signal in the Context of the High-z Galaxy Luminosity Function
• Updated fundamental constant constraints from Planck 2018 data and possible relations to the Hubble tension
• Exploring Cosmic Origins with CORE: Cosmological Parameters
• Too Hot, Too Cold or Just Right? Implications of a 21-cm Signal for Dark Matter Annihilation and Decay
• Which spectral distortions does $\Lambda$CDM actually predict?
• Systematic Uncertainties In Constraining Dark Matter Annihilation From The Cosmic Microwave Background
• Beyond y and μ: the shape of the CMB spectral distortions in the intermediate epoch, 1.5x10^4 < z < 2x10^5
• Early recombination as a solution to the $H_0$ tension
• Exotic energy injection with ExoCLASS: Application to the Higgs portal model and evaporating black holes
• Constraints on dark matter annihilation from CMB observations before Planck
• CMB and BBN constraints on evaporating primordial black holes revisited
• Constraining dark matter late-time energy injection: decays and p-wave annihilations
• The synergy between CMB spectral distortions and anisotropies
• DarkHistory: A code package for calculating modified cosmic ionization and thermal histories with dark matter and other exotic energy injections
• Heating of the intergalactic medium by the cosmic microwave background during cosmic dawn
• Spectral distortion constraints on photon injection from low-mass decaying particles
• SPT-3G D1: CMB temperature and polarization power spectra and cosmology from 2019 and 2020 observations of the SPT-3G Main field
• On the detection of spectral ripples from the Recombination Epoch
• HYREC-2: a highly accurate sub-millisecond recombination code
• Lyman-$\alpha$ Constraints on Cosmic Heating from Dark Matter Annihilation and Decay
• Can Early Dark Energy Explain EDGES?
• Probing Cosmic Reionization and Molecular Gas Growth with TIME
• CMB bounds on dark matter annihilation: Nucleon energy-losses after recombination
• Effective photon mass and (dark) photon conversion in the inhomogeneous Universe
• CMB anisotropy and BBN constraints on pre-recombination decay of dark matter to visible particles
• Interpreting the Global 21-cm Signal from High Redshifts. I. Model Independent Constraints
• Axi-Higgs Cosmology
• Power law cosmology model comparison with CMB scale information
• Les Houches Lectures on Indirect Detection of Dark Matter
• Varying fundamental constants principal component analysis: additional hints about the Hubble tension
• Modeling the Radio Foreground for detection of CMB spectral distortions from Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization
• Machine Learning improved fits of the sound horizon at the baryon drag epoch
• Rich structure of non-thermal relativistic CMB spectral distortions from high energy particle cascades at redshifts $z\lesssim 2\times 10^5$
• Polarized anisotropic spectral distortions of the CMB: Galactic and extragalactic constraints on photon-axion conversion
• Constraints on hidden photons from current and future observations of CMB spectral distortions
• Dark Matter Interactions, Helium, and the CMB
• The role of soft photon injection and heating in 21 cm cosmology
• Using the cosmological recombination radiation to probe early dark energy and fundamental constant variations
• How sound are our ultra-light axion approximations?
• Reionization and dark matter decay
• Constraining galactic structures of mirror dark matter
• Constraints on Primordial Magnetic Fields from their impact on the ionization history with Planck 2018
• Structure Formation and the Global 21-cm Signal in the Presence of Coulomb-like Dark Matter-Baryon Interactions
• Probing neutrino physics with a self-consistent treatment of the weak decoupling, nucleosynthesis, and photon decoupling epochs
• Constraints on perturbations to the recombination history from measurements of the CMB damping tail
• Sensitivity forecasts for the cosmological recombination radiation in the presence of foregrounds
• Systematic uncertainties in models of the cosmic dawn
• Constraints on accreting primordial black holes with the global 21-cm signal
• Can accreting primordial black holes explain the excess radio background?
• Variations in fundamental constants at the cosmic dawn
• Cosmological 21cm line observations to test scenarios of super-Eddington accretion on to black holes being seeds of high-redshifted supermassive black holes
• Enlightening the dark ages with dark matter
• CMB spectral distortions from continuous large energy release
• Multi-fluid cosmology in Einstein gravity: analytical solutions
• The 21-cm Signal from the Cosmological Epoch of Recombination
• Impacts of new small-scale N-body simulations on dark matter annihilations constrained from cosmological 21cm line observations
• DISCO-DJ I: a differentiable Einstein-Boltzmann solver for cosmology
• EDGES signal in presence of magnetic fields
• Primordial gravitational wave phenomenology with polarized Sunyaev Zel'dovich tomography
• Reionization in the dark and the light from Cosmic Microwave Background
• LiteBIRD Science Goals and Forecasts: Primordial Magnetic Fields
• The impact of theoretical assumptions in the determination of the neutrino effective number from future CMB measurements
• Perturbed recombination from inhomogeneous photon injection and application to accreting primordial black holes
• The role of $T_0$ in CMB anisotropy measurements
• A closer look at dark photon explanations of the excess radio background
• Hunting Primordial Black Hole Dark Matter in Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest
• New Interpretations of the Cosmological Preference for a Negative Neutrino Mass
• Mirror Dark Sector Solution of the Hubble Tension with Time-varying Fine-structure Constant
• Comparison of numerical methods for computing the repeated Compton scattering of photons in isotropic media
• Primordial Magnetic Fields in Light of Dark Ages Global 21-cm Signal
• The ultimate frontier of 21cm cosmology
• Cosmic microwave background constraints on extended dark matter objects
• Axi-Higgs cosmology: Cosmic Microwave Background and cosmological tensions
• Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy numerical solution (CMBAns) I: An introduction to $C_l$ calculation
• Relative baryon-dark matter velocities in cosmological zoom simulations
• Cosmology with Recombination Spectrum
• Cosmic Neutrino Decoupling and its Observable Imprints: Insights from Entropic-Dual Transport
• 21-cm Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation after an Early Matter-Dominated Era
• Cosmological Zero Modes
• Saha ionization equation in early universe
• Two-photon spontaneous emission of an atom in a cosmic string background
• Constraining broad photon spectrum injections from exotic and astrophysical sources
• ECHO21: a tool for modelling global 21-cm signal from dark ages to reionization
• EDGES of the dark forest: A new absorption window into the composite dark matter and large scale structure
• Direct Collapse Black Hole Candidates from Decaying Dark Matter
• The Effects of Dark Matter Annihilation and Dark Matter-Baryon Velocity Offsets at Cosmic Dawn
• In Search of Global 21-cm Signal using Artificial Neural Network in light of ARCADE 2
• The magnitude of the dark ages 21-cm signal in the context of existing early and late time constraints on $\Lambda$CDM
• Sensitivities on non-spinning and spinning primordial black hole dark matter with global 21 cm troughs
• Revisiting the quasi-molecular mechanism of recombination
• Constraint on the chemical potentials of hydrogen and proton in recombination