Bayesian approach to constraining the properties of ionized bubbles during reionization

Abstract

A possible way to study the reionization of cosmic hydrogen is by observing the large ionized regions (bubbles) around bright individual sources, e.g., quasars, using the redshifted 21 cm signal. It has already been shown that matched filter-based methods are not only able to detect the weak 21 cm signal from these bubbles but also aid in constraining their properties. In this work, we extend the previous studies to develop a rigorous Bayesian framework to explore the possibility of constraining the parameters that characterize the bubbles. To check the accuracy with which we can recover the bubble parameters, we apply our method on mock observations appropriate for the upcoming SKA1-low. For a region of size $\gtrsim 50$ cMpc around a typical quasar at redshift 7, we find that $\approx 20$ h of integration with SKA1-low will be able to constrain the size and location of the bubbles, as well as the difference in the neutral hydrogen fraction inside and outside the bubble, with $\lesssim 10\%$ precision. The recovery of the parameters are more precise and the SNR of the detected signal is higher when the bubble sizes are larger and their shapes are close to spherical. Our method can be useful in identifying regions in the observed field which contain large ionized regions and hence are interesting for following up with deeper integration times.

17 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (22)

• A luminous quasar at a redshift of z = 7.085
• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• Efficient Simulations of Early Structure Formation and Reionization
• The morphology of HII regions during reionization
• Improved upper limits on the 21-cm signal power spectrum of neutral hydrogen at $\mathbf{z}\approx 9.1$ from LOFAR
• 21CMMC: an MCMC analysis tool enabling astrophysical parameter studies of the cosmic 21 cm signal
• Cosmological Radiative Transfer Codes Comparison Project I: The Static Density Field Tests
• Simulating Cosmic Reionization at Large Scales II: the 21-cm Emission Features and Statistical Signals
• Inside-out or Outside-in: The topology of reionization in the photon-starved regime suggested by Lyman-alpha forest data
• The identification of z-dropouts in Pan-STARRS1: three quasars at 6.5<z<6.7
• 21 cm signal from cosmic dawn: Imprints of spin temperature fluctuations and peculiar velocities
• Constraining the intergalactic medium at $z\approx$ 9.1 using LOFAR Epoch of Reionization observations
• The Subaru high-z quasar survey: discovery of faint z~6 quasars
• Cosmic Reionization and the 21-cm signal: Comparison between an analytical model and a simulation
• Fast Large-Scale Reionization Simulations
• The simulated 21 cm signal during the epoch of reionization : full modeling of the Ly-alpha pumping
• Emulation of reionization simulations for Bayesian inference of astrophysics parameters using neural networks
• Cosmological HII Bubble Growth During Reionization
• Imaging the redshifted 21-cm pattern around the first sources during the cosmic dawn using the SKA
• Detecting ionized bubbles in redshifted 21 cm maps
• Impact of Ly$\alpha$ heating on the global 21-cm signal from the Cosmic Dawn
• Cosmological implications of the composite spectra of galactic X-ray binaries constructed using MAXI data

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Constraining the state of the intergalactic medium during the Epoch of Reionization using MWA 21-cm signal observations
• Inferring the properties of the sources of reionization using the morphological spectra of the ionized regions
• Studying Cosmic Dawn using redshifted HI 21-cm signal: A brief review
• Deep learning approach for identification of HII regions during reionization in 21-cm observations -- II. foreground contamination
• Probing early universe through redshifted 21-cm signal: Modelling and observational challenges
• Astrophysical information from the Rayleigh-Jeans Tail of the CMB
• Stacking Redshifted 21cm Images of HII Regions Around High Redshift Galaxies as a Probe of Early Reionization
• Probing the Epoch of Reionization using synergies of line intensity mapping