The rich complexity of 21-cm fluctuations produced by the first stars

Abstract

We explore the complete history of the 21-cm signal in the redshift range z = 7-40. This redshift range includes various epochs of cosmic evolution related to primordial star formation, and should be accessible to existing or planned low-frequency radio telescopes. We use semi-numerical computational methods to explore the fluctuation signal over wavenumbers between 0.03 and 1 Mpc${}^{-1}$, accounting for the inhomogeneous backgrounds of Ly-$\alpha$, X-ray, Lyman-Werner and ionizing radiation. We focus on the recently noted expectation of heating dominated by a hard X-ray spectrum from high-mass X-ray binaries. We study the resulting delayed cosmic heating and suppression of gas temperature fluctuations, allowing for large variations in the minimum halo mass that contributes to star formation. We show that the wavenumbers at which the heating peak is detected in observations should tell us about the characteristic mean free path and spectrum of the emitted photons, thus giving key clues as to the character of the sources that heated the primordial Universe. We also consider the line-of-sight anisotropy, which allows additional information to be extracted from the 21-cm signal. For example, the heating transition at which the cosmic gas is heated to the temperature of the cosmic microwave background should be clearly marked by an especially isotropic power spectrum. More generally, an additional cross-power component $P_X$ directly probes which sources dominate 21-cm fluctuations. In particular, during cosmic reionization (and after the just-mentioned heating transition), $P_X$ is negative on scales dominated by ionization fluctuations and positive on those dominated by temperature fluctuations.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in MNRAS, 13 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables

References in corpus (54)

• Planck 2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters
• LOFAR: The LOw-Frequency ARray
• Nine-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Final Maps and Results
• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• The Formation of the First Star in the Universe
• How small were the first cosmological objects?
• 21-cm Tomography of the Intergalactic Medium at High Redshift
• 21cmFAST: A Fast, Semi-Numerical Simulation of the High-Redshift 21-cm Signal
• Cosmological Parameter Estimation Using 21 cm Radiation from the Epoch of Reionization
• The Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization: 8 Station Results
• Effect of Primordial Black Holes on the Cosmic Microwave Background and Cosmological Parameter Estimates
• The Radiative Feedback of the First Cosmological Objects
• Cosmological Formation of Low-Mass Objects
• Formation of the First Stars
• What Next-Generation 21 cm Power Spectrum Measurements Can Teach Us About the Epoch of Reionization
• Reionization and the Cosmic Dawn with the Square Kilometre Array
• A simulation calibrated limit on the HI power spectrum from the GMRT Epoch of Reionization experiment
• Science with the Murchison Widefield Array
• The Global 21 Centimeter Background from High Redshifts
• Detecting the Earliest Galaxies Through Two New Sources of 21cm Fluctuations
• A Method for Separating the Physics from the Astrophysics of High-Redshift 21cm Fluctuations
• Stellar black holes at the dawn of the universe
• Energy Feedback from X-ray Binaries in the Early Universe
• The CMBR fluctuations from HI perturbations prior to reionization
• X-ray emission from star-forming galaxies - II. Hot interstellar medium
• The observable signature of late heating of the Universe during cosmic reionization
• Simulating cosmic reionization: How large a volume is large enough?
• Reionization by Hard Photons: I. X-rays from the First Star Clusters
• Impact of the Relative Motion between the Dark Matter and Baryons on the First Stars
• The signature of the first stars in atomic hydrogen at redshift 20
• The Delay of Population III Star Formation by Supersonic Streaming Velocities
• The 21-cm signature of the first stars during the Lyman-Werner feedback era
• The X-ray spectra of the first galaxies: 21cm signatures
• Observing Neutral Hydrogen Above Redshift 6: The "Global" Perspective
• Probing the First Stars and Black Holes in the Early Universe with the Dark Ages Radio Explorer (DARE)
• Evidence of Gunn-Peterson damping wings in high-z quasar spectra: strengthening the case for incomplete reionization
• Suppression and Spatial Variation of Early Galaxies and Minihalos
• Redshift Space Distortion of the 21cm Background from the Epoch of Reionization I: Methodology Re-examined
• Large-scale BAO signatures of the smallest galaxies
• Simulations of Early Baryonic Structure Formation with Stream Velocity: II. The Gas Fraction
• Reionization by UV or X-ray sources
• The First Stars in The Universe
• High-Redshift Star Formation in a Time-Dependent Lyman-Werner Background
• Large-Scale Structure Shocks at Low and High Redshifts
• Complete history of the observable 21-cm signal from the first stars during the pre-reionization era
• The nature of dark matter from the global high redshift HI 21 cm signal
• X-ray emission from high-redshift miniquasars: self-regulating the population of massive black holes through global warming
• Constraining the epoch of reionization with the variance statistic: simulations of the LOFAR case
• The 21 cm Signature of Cosmic String Wakes
• The effect of peculiar velocities on the epoch of reionization (EoR) 21-cm signal
• Light cone anisotropy in 21 cm signal from the epoch of reionization
• Lyalpha versus X-ray heating in the high-z IGM
• Detecting Early Galaxies Through Their 21-cm Signature
• Will Nonlinear Peculiar Velocity and Inhomogeneous Reionization Spoil 21cm Cosmology from the Epoch of Reionization?

Cited by in corpus (58)

• Inferring the astrophysics of reionization and cosmic dawn from galaxy luminosity functions and the 21-cm signal
• Charting the Parameter Space of the Global 21-cm Signal
• Signature of Excess Radio Background in the 21-cm Global Signal and Power Spectrum
• The Impact of the First Galaxies on Cosmic Dawn and Reionization
• Quantifying the non-Gaussianity in the EoR 21-cm signal through bispectrum
• The Rise of the First Stars: Supersonic Streaming, Radiative Feedback, and 21-cm Cosmology
• Emulating Simulations of Cosmic Dawn for 21cm Power Spectrum Constraints on Cosmology, Reionization, and X-ray Heating
• The first power spectrum limit on the 21-cm signal of neutral hydrogen during the Cosmic Dawn at z=20-25 from LOFAR
• The REACH radiometer for detecting the 21-cm hydrogen signal from redshift 7.5 to 28
• SARAS 2 constraints on global 21-cm signals from the Epoch of Reionization
• Probing the Small-Scale Matter Power Spectrum with Large-Scale 21-cm Data
• The Influence of Streaming Velocities on the Formation of the First Stars
• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• Tight Constraints on the Excess Radio Background at $z=9.1$ from LOFAR
• A tale of two sites -- I: Inferring the properties of minihalo-hosted galaxies from current observations
• High-redshift radio galaxies: a potential new source of 21-cm fluctuations
• The subtlety of Ly-a photons: changing the expected range of the 21-cm signal
• Robust Velocity-induced Acoustic Oscillations at Cosmic Dawn
• Constraining the redshifted 21-cm signal with the unresolved soft X-ray background
• Results from EDGES High-Band: III. New Constraints on Parameters of the Early Universe
• First upper limits on the 21 cm signal power spectrum from cosmic dawn from one night of observations with NenuFAR
• Astrophysical Constraints from the SARAS3 non-detection of the Cosmic Dawn Sky-Averaged 21-cm Signal
• Charting the Parameter Space of the 21-cm Power Spectrum
• GLOBALEMU: A novel and robust approach for emulating the sky-averaged 21-cm signal from the cosmic dawn and epoch of reionisation
• Simulating the Impact of X-ray Heating during the Cosmic Dawn
• The 21-cm BAO signature of enriched low-mass galaxies during cosmic reionization
• Dynamical evolution of Population III stellar systems and the resulting binary statistics
• Reconstructing the nature of the first cosmic sources from the anisotropic 21-cm signal
• Spatially Extended 21 cm Signal from Strongly Clustered UV and X-Ray Sources in the Early Universe
• Formation, disruption and energy output of Population III X-ray binaries
• X-ray Background at High Redshifts from Pop III Remnants: Results from Pop III star formation rates in the Renaissance Simulations
• Studying Cosmic Dawn using redshifted HI 21-cm signal: A brief review
• BEoRN: A fast and flexible framework to simulate the epoch of reionisation and cosmic dawn
• Detailed modelling of the 21-cm Forest
• Shot noise and scatter in the star formation efficiency as a source of 21-cm fluctuations
• Exploiting synergies between JWST and cosmic 21-cm observations to uncover star formation in the early Universe
• Signatures of Cosmic Ray Heating in 21-cm Observables
• Precise Measurement of the Reionization Optical Depth from The Global 21-cm Signal Accounting for Cosmic Heating
• Gravitational waves from mergers of Population III binary black holes: roles played by two evolution channels
• Microquasars as heating sources of the intergalactic medium during reionisation of the Universe
• Cross-correlation between the 21-cm signal and [OIII] emitters during early cosmic reionization
• The Supersonic Project: To cool or not to cool Supersonically Induced Gas Objects (SIGOs)?
• Emulation of the Cosmic Dawn 21-cm Power Spectrum and Classification of Excess Radio Models Using an Artificial Neural Network
• Photoevaporation of Minihalos during Cosmic Reionization: Primordial and Metal-Enriched Halos
• Distinguishing the impact and signature of black holes from different origins in early cosmic history
• Quantiles as Robust Probes of Non-Gaussianity in 21-cm Images
• Extracting the Global Signal from 21-cm Fluctuations: the Multi-Tracer Approach
• Simulation-Based Inference of the sky-averaged 21-cm signal from CD-EoR with REACH
• Cosmic mysteries and the hydrogen 21-cm line: bridging the gap with lunar observations
• A Global Semi-Analytic Model of the First Stars and Galaxies Including Dark Matter Halo Merger Histories
• The impact of Lyman-$\alpha$ emission line heating and cooling on the cosmic dawn 21-cm signal
• Impact of cosmic rays on the global 21-cm signal during cosmic dawn
• Effects of chemically homogeneous evolution of the first stars on the 21-cm signal and reionization
• Star Formation for Predictive Primordial Galaxy Formation
• Ultraviolet photon production rates of the first stars: Impact on the He II $\lambda$ 1640 Å emission line from primordial star clusters and the 21-cm signal from cosmic dawn
• Classification of Radio Backgrounds at Cosmic Dawn and 21 cm Signal Confirmation Using Neural Networks
• A Comprehensive Bayesian re-analysis of the SARAS2 data from the Epoch of Reionization
• From Dark Matter Minihalos to Large-Scale Radiative Feedback: A Self-Consistent 3D Simulation of the First Stars and Galaxies using Neural Networks