Testing the scale-dependent hemispherical asymmetry with the 21-cm power spectrum from the epoch of reionization

Abstract

Hemispherical power asymmetry has emerged as a new challenge to cosmology in early universe. While the cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements indicated the asymmetry amplitude $A\simeq 0.07$ at the CMB scale $k_{\mathrm{CMB}}\simeq 0.0045{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$, the high-redshift quasar observations found no significant deviation from statistical isotropy. This conflict can be reconciled in some scale-dependent asymmetry models. We put forward a new parameterization of scale-dependent asymmetric power spectrum, inspired by a multi-speed inflation model. The 21-cm power spectrum from the epoch of reionization can be used to constrain the scale-dependent hemispherical asymmetry. We demonstrate that an optimum, multi-frequency observation by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Phase 2 can impose a constraint on the amplitude of the power asymmetry anomaly at the level of $\Delta A\simeq 0.2$ at $0.056\lesssim k_{21cm}\lesssim 0.15{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$. This limit may be further improved by an order of magnitude as $\Delta A\simeq 0.01$ with a cosmic variance limited experiment such as the Omniscope.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS