High redshift signatures in the 21 cm forest due to cosmic string wakes

Abstract

Cosmic strings induce minihalo formation in the early universe. The resultant minihalos cluster in string wakes and create a "21 cm forest" against the cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectrum. Such a 21 cm forest can contribute to angular fluctuations of redshifted 21 cm signals integrated along the line of sight. We calculate the root-mean-square amplitude of the 21 cm fluctuations due to strings and show that these fluctuations can dominate signals from minihalos due to primordial density fluctuations at high redshift ($z\gtrsim 10$), even if the string tension is below the current upper bound, $G\mu <1.5\times 10^{-7}$. Our results also predict that the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) can potentially detect the 21 cm fluctuations due to strings with $G\mu \approx 7.5\times 10^{-8}$ for the single frequency band case and $4.0\times 10^{-8}$ for the multi-frequency band case.

13 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• The 21 cm Signature of Cosmic String Wakes
• Reionization from cosmic string loops
• Constraints on Superconducting Cosmic Strings from Early Reionization
• Jeans Instability of Palomar 5's Tidal Tail
• 21 cm Angular Spectrum of Cosmic String Loops

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Constraining warm dark matter with 21 cm line fluctuations due to minihalos
• 21 cm Angular Power Spectrum from Minihalos as a Probe of Primordial Spectral Runnings
• Tunneling decay of false vortices with gravitation