Measuring the Small-Scale Power Spectrum of Cosmic Density Fluctuations Through 21 cm Tomography Prior to the Epoch of Structure Formation

Abstract

The thermal evolution of the cosmic gas decoupled from that of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at a redshift z~200. Afterwards and before the first stars had formed, the cosmic neutral hydrogen absorbed the CMB flux at its resonant 21cm spin-flip transition. We calculate the evolution of the spin temperature for this transition and the resulting anisotropies that are imprinted on the CMB sky due to linear density fluctuations during this epoch. These anisotropies at an observed wavelength of 10.56[(1+z)/50] meters, contain an amount of information that is orders of magnitude larger than any other cosmological probe. Their detection, although challenging, could tightly constrain any possible running of the spectral index from inflation (as suggested by WMAP), small deviations from Gaussianity, or any significant contribution from neutrinos or warm dark matter to the cosmic mass budget.

4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

Cited by in corpus (277)

• String Axiverse
• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• 21-cm cosmology
• Observational constraints on Cosmic Reionization
• Relative velocity of dark matter and baryonic fluids and the formation of the first structures
• The Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization: 8 Station Results
• The First Cosmic Structures and their Effects
• The Physics of the Intergalactic Medium
• Reionization and the Cosmic Dawn with the Square Kilometre Array
• Super-acceleration as Signature of Dark Sector Interaction
• Detecting the Earliest Galaxies Through Two New Sources of 21cm Fluctuations
• 21 cm fluctuations from inhomogeneous X-ray heating before reionization
• Wouthuysen-Field coupling strength and application to high-redshift 21 cm radiation
• A Method for Separating the Physics from the Astrophysics of High-Redshift 21cm Fluctuations
• Toward Epoch of Reionization Measurements with Wide-Field Radio Observations
• Data Analysis for Precision 21 cm Cosmology
• Non-Gaussianity as a Particle Detector
• The Effective Field Theory of Multifield Inflation
• Stellar black holes at the dawn of the universe
• Signs of Dark Matter at 21-cm?
• Features and New Physical Scales in Primordial Observables: Theory and Observation
• Evolution of the 21 cm signal throughout cosmic history
• Cosmic Microwave Background Statistics for a Direction-Dependent Primordial Power Spectrum
• The GMRT-EoR Experiment: A new upper limit on the neutral hydrogen power spectrum at z~8.6
• A Method for 21cm Power Spectrum Estimation in the Presence of Foregrounds
• Possibility of Precise Measurement of the Cosmological Power Spectrum With a Dedicated 21cm Survey After Reionization
• Back to the Moon: The Scientific Rationale for Resuming Lunar Surface Exploration
• Constraining the unexplored period between reionization and the dark ages with observations of the global 21 cm signal
• Coaxing Cosmic 21cm Fluctuations from the Polarized Sky using m-mode Analysis
• Twenty-one centimeter tomography with foregrounds
• Tighter Limits on Dark Matter Explanations of the Anomalous EDGES 21cm Signal
• On using visibility correlations to probe the HI distribution from the dark ages to the present epoch I: Formalism and the expected signal
• The 21cm angular-power spectrum from the dark ages
• Fast Large Volume Simulations of the 21 cm Signal from the Reionization and pre-Reionization Epochs
• Heating of Baryons due to Scattering with Dark Matter During the Dark Ages
• Neutral hydrogen surveys for high redshift galaxy clusters and proto-clusters
• Reviving Millicharged Dark Matter for 21-cm Cosmology
• Science with a lunar low-frequency array: from the dark ages of the Universe to nearby exoplanets
• The spin temperature and 21cm brightness of the intergalactic medium in the pre-reionization era
• Descending from on high: Lyman series cascades and spin-kinetic temperature coupling in the 21 cm line
• The Sensitivity of First Generation Epoch of Reionization Observatories and Their Potential for Differentiating Theoretical Power Spectra
• Precision Calibration of Radio Interferometers Using Redundant Baselines
• The Effects of Dark Matter Decay and Annihilation on the High-Redshift 21 cm Background
• The Impact of the First Galaxies on Cosmic Dawn and Reionization
• Clustering Fossils from the Early Universe
• Standard Model Background of the Cosmological Collider
• Prospects for Cosmological Collider Physics
• Toward Empirical Constraints on the Global Redshifted 21 cm Brightness Temperature During the Epoch of Reionization
• The Rise of the First Stars: Supersonic Streaming, Radiative Feedback, and 21-cm Cosmology
• The Epoch of Reionization
• The multi-frequency angular power spectrum of the epoch of reionization 21 cm signal
• A model with cosmological Bell inequalities
• The Imprint of Warm Dark Matter on the Cosmological 21-cm Signal
• Growth of Linear Perturbations before the Era of the First Galaxies
• Heavy-Lifting of Gauge Theories By Cosmic Inflation
• The impacts of dark matter particle annihilation on recombination and the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background
• 21-cm Background Anisotropies Can Discern Primordial Non-Gaussianity
• Statistical Description of Synchrotron Intensity Fluctuations: Studies of Astrophysical Magnetic Turbulence
• Cosmic Reionization and the 21-cm signal: Comparison between an analytical model and a simulation
• How well can we measure and understand foregrounds with 21 cm experiments?
• The bispectrum of redshifted 21-cm fluctuations from the dark ages
• Imprints of Massive Primordial Fields on Large-Scale Structure
• The Physics and Early History of the Intergalactic Medium
• The Pesky Power Asymmetry
• Questions on calculation of primordial power spectrum with large spikes: the resonance model case
• Imprint of Intergalactic Shocks on the Radio Sky
• Will point sources spoil 21 cm tomography?
• Cosmological Collider Physics and the Curvaton
• Probing Reionization with Intensity Mapping of Molecular and Fine Structure Lines
• A Naturally Large Four-Point Function in Single Field Inflation
• Large-Scale Structure Shocks at Low and High Redshifts
• The Scalar Chemical Potential in Cosmological Collider Physics
• Distinctive signatures of space-time diffeomorphism breaking in EFT of inflation
• A new light on 21 cm intensity fluctuations from the dark ages
• Seeing Higher-Dimensional Grand Unification In Primordial Non-Gaussianities
• The Impact of a Percolating IGM on Redshifted 21 cm Observations of Quasar HII Regions
• A Fast Method for Power Spectrum and Foreground Analysis for 21 cm Cosmology
• Towards a measurement of the spectral runnings
• Lensing Reconstruction using redshifted 21cm Fluctuations
• Non-gaussianity of inflationary field perturbations from the field equation
• The 21cm Signature of the First Stars
• Probing the Epoch of Early Baryonic Infall Through 21cm Fluctuations
• The Future of Primordial Features with 21 cm Tomography
• Spin Exchange Rates in Electron-Hydrogen Collisions
• Robust Velocity-induced Acoustic Oscillations at Cosmic Dawn
• Cosmological production of H_2 before the formation of the first galaxies
• The early reionization with the primordial magnetic fields
• The 21 cm signal and the interplay between dark matter annihilations and astrophysical processes
• Features in Dark Energy Equation of State and Modulations in the Hubble Diagram
• The 21cm Power Spectrum After Reionization
• HI Signal from Reionization Epoch
• Primordial non-Gaussianity in the large scale structure of the Universe
• Dark matter annihilation and its effect on CMB and Hydrogen 21 cm observations
• Lensing of 21-cm Fluctuations by Primordial Gravitational Waves
• A Running Spectral Index in Supersymmetric Dark-Matter Models with Quasi-Stable Charged Particles
• Signatures of primordial black holes as seeds of supermassive black holes
• Prospects for Redshifted 21-cm observations of quasar HII regions
• The trispectrum of 21-cm background anisotropies as a probe of primordial non-Gaussianity
• Inflation and Early Dark Energy with a Stage II Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
• Spherical Harmonic Analyses of Intensity Mapping Power Spectra
• The Energy Cascade from Warm Dark Matter Decays
• Probing the scale dependence of non-Gaussianity with spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background
• Constraints on Fundamental Cosmological Parameters with Upcoming Redshifted 21 cm Observations
• Probing Primordial Magnetic Fields with the 21cm Fluctuations
• An Effective Model for the Cosmic-Dawn 21-cm Signal
• Cosmic 21-cm Delensing of Microwave Background Polarization and the Minimum Detectable Energy Scale of Inflation
• Impact of Simulated 1/f Noise for HI Intensity Mapping Experiments
• Influence of primordial magnetic fields on 21 cm emission
• Mapper of the IGM spin temperature: instrument overview
• Supersonic Relative Velocity between Dark Matter and Baryons: A Review
• Probing small-scale cosmological fluctuations with the 21 cm forest: effects of neutrino mass, running spectral index and warm dark matter
• Gauge mediation in supergravity and gravitino dark matter
• Space-based Aperture Array For Ultra-Long Wavelength Radio Astronomy
• Eternal Inflation, Bubble Collisions, and the Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory
• Non-linear Redshift-Space Power Spectra
• The Hunt for Primordial Interactions in the Large Scale Structures of the Universe
• Light-cone anisotropy in 21cm fluctuations during the epoch of reionization
• The First Stars in the Universe and Cosmic Reionization
• Precision modelling of the matter power spectrum in a Planck-like Universe
• Constraining large scale HI bias using redshifted 21-cm signal from the post-reionization epoch
• Astrophysics and Cosmology with Line-Intensity Mapping
• Warm dark matter and the ionization history of the Universe
• Prospects for precision cosmology with the 21 cm signal from the dark ages
• 21 cm Tomography of the High-Redshift Universe with the Square Kilometer Array
• Separating out the Alcock-Paczynski Effect on 21cm Fluctuations
• Two- and Three-Dimensional Probes of Parity in Primordial Gravity Waves
• Polarizing Bubble Collisions
• Cosmological and Astrophysical Parameter Measurements with 21-cm Anisotropies During the Era of Reionization
• Exploring the likelihood of the 21-cm power spectrum with simulation-based inference
• Background reionization history from omniscopes
• Flooded Dark Matter and S Level Rise
• Cosmic (super)string constraints from 21 cm radiation
• Rich structure of non-thermal relativistic CMB spectral distortions from high energy particle cascades at redshifts $z\lesssim 2\times 10^5$
• 21 cm radiation - a new probe of variation in the fine structure constant
• Reconstructing the Inflationary Landscape with Cosmological Data
• Studying the Sources of Cosmic Reionization with 21-cm Fluctuations
• Late Forming Dark Matter in Theories of Neutrino Dark Energy
• Gravitational Wave Probes of Massive Gauge Bosons at the Cosmological Collider
• Bayesian semi-blind component separation for foreground removal in interferometric 21-cm observations
• Bounds on Ultra-Light Hidden-Photon Dark Matter from 21cm at Cosmic Dawn
• What will anisotropies in the clustering pattern in redshifted 21 cm maps tell us?
• A cosmologically consistent millicharged dark matter solution to the EDGES anomaly of possible string theory origin
• Was the Universe Reionized at Redshift 10?
• Radiative Transfer Effect on Ultraviolet Pumping of the 21cm Line in the High Redshift Universe
• Large-Scale Non-Gaussianities in the 21 cm Background Anisotropies From the Era of Reionization
• Constraining warm dark matter with 21 cm line fluctuations due to minihalos
• Probing the bispectrum at high redshifts using 21 cm HI observations
• Primordial black holes in the Dark Ages: Observational prospects for future 21cm surveys
• The Spin-Resolved Atomic Velocity Distribution and 21-cm Line Profile of Dark-Age Gas
• CMB and 21-cm Signals for Dark Matter with a Long-Lived Excited State
• Redshifted 21 cm Emission From the Pre-Reionization Era II. HII Regions Around Individual Quasars
• Prospects for detecting the 326.5 MHz redshifted 21 cm HI signal with the Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT)
• Measuring the Primordial Deuterium Abundance During the Cosmic Dark Ages
• Probing ultra-light axions with the 21-cm Signal during Cosmic Dawn
• How Density Environment Changes the Influence of the Dark Matter-Baryon Streaming Velocity on the Cosmological Structure Formation
• Violation of statistical isotropy and homogeneity in the 21-cm power spectrum
• Ionizing radiation from hydrogen recombination strongly suppresses the lithium scattering signature in the CMB
• Searching for Intergalactic Shocks with the SKA
• Particle decay in the early universe: predictions for 21 cm
• Model independent constraints on mass-varying neutrino scenarios
• Polarization of 21cm Radiation from the Epoch of Reionization
• Gravitational Lensing of Cosmological 21cm Emission
• Mixed (Cold+Warm) Dark Matter in the Bino-Wino co-annihilation scenario
• 21cmfish: Fisher-matrix framework for fast parameter forecasts from the cosmic 21-cm signal
• High-resolution imaging of the cosmic mass distribution from gravitational lensing of pregalactic HI
• Studying cosmic reionization with observations of the global 21-cm signal
• A Technique for Foreground Subtraction in Redshifted 21 cm Observations
• Astro 2020 Science White Paper: Fundamental Cosmology in the Dark Ages with 21-cm Line Fluctuations
• A unified framework for 21cm tomography sample generation and parameter inference with Progressively Growing GANs
• Stars and Reionization: The Cross-Correlation of the 21cm Line and the Near Infrared Background
• Linear effects of perturbed recombination
• Imprint of Inhomogeneous Reionization on the Power Spectrum of Galaxy Surveys at High Redshifts
• Primordial Non-Gaussianity and Reionization
• How informative are summaries of the cosmic 21-cm signal?
• Large-scale Array for Radio Astronomy on the Farside
• The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array Dish III: Measuring Chromaticity of Prototype Element with Reflectometry
• Late-time vacuum phase transitions: Connecting sub-eV scale physics with cosmological structure formation
• The Dark Ages of the Universe and Hydrogen Reionization
• Perturbed Recombination from Dark Matter Annihilation
• Signatures of Modified Gravity on the 21-cm Power Spectrum at Reionisation
• TASI Lectures on Primordial Cosmology
• Detection and Fundamental Applications of Individual First Galaxies
• 21cmFirstCLASS I. Cosmological tool for $\Lambda$CDM and beyond
• New probe of magnetic fields in the prereionization epoch. I. Formalism
• Current constraints on early and stressed dark energy models and future 21 cm perspectives
• Chemical separation of primordial Li${}^{+}$ during structure formation caused by nanogauss magnetic field
• The PAU survey: Ly$\alpha$ intensity mapping forecast
• Modification of the 21-cm power spectrum by X-rays during the epoch of reionisation
• The contribution of the IGM and minihalos to the 21 cm signal of reionization
• The 21-cm signals from ultracompact minihalos as a probe of primordial small-scale fluctuations
• Constraining exotic dark matter models with the dark ages 21-cm signal
• Probing Compensated Isocurvature with the 21-cm Signal during Cosmic Dawn
• Modification of the 21-cm power spectrum by quasars during the epoch of reionisation
• Precision Predictions for the Primordial Power Spectra of Scalar Potential Models of Inflation
• The effect of Galactic foreground subtraction on redshifted 21-cm observations of quasar HII regions
• The First Billion Years in Seconds: An Effective Model for the 21-cm Signal with Population III Stars
• The cross-correlation of the CMB polarisation and the 21-cm line fluctuations from cosmic reionisation
• Searching for blue in the dark
• Modifications to the Cosmic 21-cm Background Frequency Spectrum by Scattering via electrons in Galaxy Clusters
• How Inflationary Gravitons Affect Gravitational Radiation
• The 21-cm Signal from the Cosmological Epoch of Recombination
• HI 21cm probes of reionization, and beyond
• Unveiling cosmological information on small scales with line intensity mapping
• Detecting primordial gravitational waves with circular polarization of the redshifted 21 cm line: I. Formalism
• Dark Matter Astrophysics
• Power Spectrum and Non-Gaussianities in Anisotropic Inflation
• Predictions for the sky-averaged depth of the 21cm absorption signal at high redshift in cosmologies with and without non-baryonic cold dark matter
• Cosmic 21-cm Fluctuations as a Probe of Fundamental Physics
• Constraint on the early-formed dark matter halos using the free-free emission in the Planck foreground analysis
• Post-reionization HI 21-cm signal: A probe of negative cosmological constant
• A new probe of magnetic fields in the pre-reionization epoch: II. Detectability
• Imprints of Non-thermal Wino Dark Matter on Small-Scale Structure
• Testing the scale-dependent hemispherical asymmetry with the 21-cm power spectrum from the epoch of reionization
• Grand Unification at the Cosmological Collider with Chemical Potential
• 21cmFirstCLASS II. Early linear fluctuations of the 21cm signal
• Impact of radiation from primordial black holes on the 21-cm angular-power spectrum in the dark ages
• How much cosmological information can be measured?
• Detecting the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect with high-redshift 21-cm surveys
• Resonant non-Gaussianity with equilateral properties
• Effects of feedback-free starburst galaxies on the 21-cm signal and reionization history
• 21-cm foreground removal using AI and frequency-difference technique
• Can power spectrum observations rule out slow-roll inflation?
• Trading kinetic energy: How late kinetic decoupling of dark matter changes $N_{\text{eff}}$
• Mapping the Universe in HD
• Optimal analysis of azimuthal features in the CMB
• Dark ages, a window on the dark sector. Hunting for ultra-light axions
• Detecting First Star Lyman-$\alpha$ Spheres through Gravitational Telescopes
• Galaxy-cluster masses via 21st-century measurements of lensing of 21-cm fluctuations
• Redshifted 21cm Observations of High Redshift Quasar Proximity Zones
• COMAP Pathfinder -- Season 2 results I. Improved data selection and processing
• The exact analytical solution of the linear structure growth rate in LCDM cosmology and its cosmological applications
• Let there be Light: the Emergence of Structure out of the Dark Ages in the Early Universe
• Lunar Far-Side Radio Arrays: A Preliminary Site Survey
• The Optimal Cosmic Epoch for Precision Cosmology
• Charged Loops at the Cosmological Collider with Chemical Potential
• A practical theorem on using interferometry to measure the global 21-cm signal
• The ultimate frontier of 21cm cosmology
• A 125 GeV Higgs Boson Mass and Gravitino Dark Matter in R-invariant Direct Gauge Mediation
• Full-Sky Lensing Reconstruction of 21 cm Intensity Maps
• A Differentiable, End-to-End Forward Model for 21 cm Cosmology: Estimating the Foreground, Instrument, and Signal Joint Posterior
• Initial Li Abundances in the Protogalaxy and Globular Clusters Based upon the Chemical Separation and Hierarchical Structure Formation
• First Light and Reionization: A Conference Summary
• Redshifted 21-cm emission signal from the halos in Dark Ages
• Intensity mapping of post-reionization 21-cm signal and its cross-correlations as a probe of $f(R)$ gravity
• Gravitational Wave Detection Using Redshifted 21-cm Observations
• White Noise from Dark Matter: 21 cm Observations of Early Baryon Collapse
• Probing the cosmic web in Ly$\alpha$ emission over large scales: an Intensity Mapping forecast for DECaLS/BASS and DESI
• Bias-Limited Extraction of Cosmological Parameters
• Signals of the cosmological reionization in the radio sky through C and O fine structure lines
• Probing the physics and history of cosmic reionization with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect
• Establishing the origin of CMB B-mode polarization
• Narrowing the discovery space of the cosmological 21-cm signal using multi-wavelength constraints
• The Electrical Design of a Membrane Antenna for Lunar-based Low-frequency Radio Telescope
• On Measuring the 21 cm Global Spectrum of the Cosmic Dawn with an Interferometer Array
• Standard Model Prediction for Cosmological 21cm Circular Polarization
• On the Detectability of the Hydrogen 3-cm Fine Structure Line from the EoR
• Luminosity Bias (II): The Cosmic Web of the First Stars
• Hyperfine-changing transitions in ${}^3$He II and other one-electron ions by electron scattering
• Extracting 21cm signal by frequency and angular filtering
• Predicting the intensity mapping signal for multi-$J$ CO lines
• Radio Wavelength Observatories within the Exploration Architecture
• Particle production during inflation: constraints expected from redshifted 21 cm observations from the epoch of reionization
• Supersymmetric Inflation from the Fifth Dimension
• Foreground removal and angular power spectrum estimation of 21 cm signal using harmonic space ILC method
• The Optical Depth of Foregrounds for the Highest Redshift 21 cm Signals
• Is a Classical Language Adequate in Assessing the Detectability of the Redshifted 21cm Signal from the Early Universe?
• 21-cm power spectrum and ionization bias as a probe of long-mode modulated non Gaussian sky
• Impact of inhomogeneous CMB heating of gas on the HI 21-cm signal during dark ages
• Simulation of Systematics in Future Single-Dish HI Intensity Mapping Experiments
• Probing Cosmological Reionization through Radio-interferometric Observations of Neutral Hydrogen
• A Bayesian approach to high fidelity interferometric calibration I: mathematical formalism
• Contribution of Cross-Correlations to the 21cm Angular Power Spectrum in the Epoch of Reionization
• Cosmological free-free emission from dark matter halos in the $\Lambda$CDM model
• Removing systematics-induced 21-cm foreground residuals by cross-correlating filtered data
• Simulation based inference of the ionization history from the 2D 21 cm power spectrum
• It's Always Darkest Before the Cosmic Dawn: Early Results from Novel Tools and Telescopes for 21 cm Cosmology
• Probing power spectrum enhancement at small scales with the SKA