Carbon Monoxide Intensity Mapping at Moderate Redshifts

Abstract

We present a study of the feasibility of an intensity-mapping survey targeting the 115 GHz CO(1-0) rotational transition at $z\sim 3$. We consider four possible models and estimate the spatial and angular power spectra of CO fluctuations predicted by each of them. The frequency bandwidths of most proposed CO intensity mapping spectrographs are too small to use the Limber approximation to calculate the angular power spectrum, so we present an alternative method for calculating the angular power spectrum. The models we consider span two orders of magnitude in signal amplitude, so there is a significant amount of uncertainty in the theoretical predictions of this signal. We then consider a parameterized set of hypothetical spectrographs designed to measure this power spectrum and predict the signal-to-noise ratios expected under these models. With the spectrographs we consider we find that three of the four models give an SNR greater than 10 within one year of observation. We also study the effects on SNR of varying the parameters of the survey in order to demonstrate the importance of carefully considering survey parameters when planning such an experiment.

7 pages, 8 fgures, published in MNRAS

References in corpus (3)

• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• Carbon monoxide line emission as a CMB foreground: tomography of the star-forming universe with different spectral resolutions
• Cross-correlations as a cosmological carbon monoxide detector

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Line-Intensity Mapping: 2017 Status Report
• Intensity mapping of [CII] from early galaxies
• An Intensity Mapping Detection of Aggregate CO Line Emission at 3 mm
• Dissecting the high-z interstellar medium through intensity mapping cross-correlations
• Insights from probability distribution functions of intensity maps
• Measuring Galaxy Clustering and the Evolution of [CII] Mean Intensity with far-IR Line Intensity Mapping During 0.5 < z < 1.5
• Studying high-z galaxies with [CII] intensity mapping