The Wouthuysen Field Absorption Trough in Cosmic Strings Wakes

Abstract

The baryon density enhancement in cosmic string wakes leads to a stronger coupling of the spin temperature to the gas kinetic temperate inside these string wakes than in the intergalactic medium (IGM). The Wouthuysen Field (WF) effect has the potential to enhance this coupling to such an extent that it may result in the strongest and cleanest cosmic string signature in the currently planned radio telescope projects. Here we consider this enhancement under the assumption that X-ray heating is not significant. We show that the size of this effect in a cosmic string wake leads to a brightness temperature at least two times more negative than in the surrounding IGM. If the SCI-HI [1, 2] or EDGES [3, 4] experiment confirm a WF absorption trough in the cosmic gas, then cosmic string wakes should appear clearly in 21 cm redshift surveys of z = 10 to 30.

12 pages, 6 figures. v2: A new section was added that estimates the detectability of the signal. In the introduction the discussion on the motivation for and the limits on cosmic strings was expanded. Typos were corrected, references were added. The results remain unchanged. Accepted for publication in PRD

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• Intermediate Mass Black Hole Seeds from Cosmic String Loops
• A Bayesian Framework for Cosmic String Searches in CMB Maps
• A Convolutional Neural Network For Cosmic String Detection in CMB Temperature Maps
• Multi-Scale Pipeline for the Search of String-Induced CMB Anisotropies
• Dark Matter Distribution Induced by a Cosmic String Wake in the Nonlinear Regime
• Disruption of Cosmic String Wakes by Gaussian Fluctuations
• Extracting the Signal of Cosmic String Wakes from 21-cm Observations
• On the Possible Enhancement of the Global $21$-cm Signal at Reionization from the Decay of Cosmic String Cusps
• Information Theoretic Bounds on Cosmic String Detection in CMB Maps with Noise
• Fast Radio Bursts from the Decay of Cosmic String Cusps
• Inferring Cosmic String Tension through the Neural Network Prediction of String Locations in CMB Maps
• The Global 21 cm Signal of a Network of Cosmic String Wakes
• Global 21cm Absorption Signal from Superconducting Cosmic Strings
• Cosmic Strings-induced CMB anisotropies in light of Weighted Morphology