Polarization of 21cm Radiation from the Epoch of Reionization

Abstract

We consider the polarization of 21cm line radiation from the epoch of reionization due to both intrinsically polarized emission and secondary mechanisms. We argue that Thomson scattering of the 21cm quadrupole by the reionized universe is likely to produce the largest effect. The 21cm quadrupole is sourced by baryonic density fluctuations and the fluctuations in the ionization fraction due to discrete \ion{H}{2} regions. Since Thomson scattering produces only E-type polarization and is achromatic, its unique fingerprint can in principle be separated from foregrounds associated with polarized synchrotron emission which should not be correlated with the cosmic signal. We estimate that Poisson fluctuations of \ion{H}{2} regions at the end of reionization ($z_R\sim 6$--20) produce a brightness temperature-polarization cross-correlation signal of $\sim 0.1-0.3mK$ on angular scales of tens of arcminutes. This cross-correlation signal is within the instrument sensitivities of the future {\it Square Kilometer Array} (SKA) and close to the sensitivities of the forthcoming {\it Mileura Widefield Array} (MWA) and {\it Low Frequency Array} (LOFAR).

arXiv comment10 pages, 6 figures, replaced to match version accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (47)

• First Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Determination of Cosmological Parameters
• Halo Models of Large Scale Structure
• A Line of Sight Approach to Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies
• In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe
• An All-Sky Analysis of Polarization in the Microwave Background
• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) First Year Observations: TE Polarization
• 21-cm Tomography of the Intergalactic Medium at High Redshift
• Detection of Polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background using DASI
• Gravitational Lensing Effect on Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization
• Weak Gravitational Lensing by Large-Scale Structure
• The Protogalactic Origin for Cosmic Magnetic Fields
• 21 Centimeter Fluctuations from Cosmic Gas at High Redshifts
• CMB Anisotropies: Total Angular Momentum Method
• Measuring the Small-Scale Power Spectrum of Cosmic Density Fluctuations Through 21 cm Tomography Prior to the Epoch of Structure Formation
• Photoevaporation of Cosmological Minihalos during Reionization
• Unusually Large Fluctuations in the Statistics of Galaxy Formation at High Redshift
• Detecting the Earliest Galaxies Through Two New Sources of 21cm Fluctuations
• Reionization of Hydrogen and Helium by Early Stars and Quasars
• A Method for Separating the Physics from the Astrophysics of High-Redshift 21cm Fluctuations
• Radio Signatures of HI at High Redshift: Mapping the End of the ``Dark Ages''
• Toward Epoch of Reionization Measurements with Wide-Field Radio Observations
• Fossil HII Regions: Self-Limiting Star Formation at High Redshift
• The Reionization History at High Redshifts I: Physical Models and New Constraints from CMB Polarization
• The CMBR fluctuations from HI perturbations prior to reionization
• Radio Foregrounds for the 21cm Tomography of the Neutral Intergalactic Medium at High Redshifts
• Faraday Rotation of Microwave Background Polarization by a Primordial Magnetic Field
• Reionization Revisited: Secondary CMB Anisotropies and Polarization
• Statistical Probes of Reionization With 21 cm Tomography
• Polarization of the Microwave Background in Reionized Models
• Intergalactic Magnetic Fields from Quasar Outflows
• Cosmic Reionisation by Stellar Sources: Population III Stars
• The Kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect from Reionization
• Faraday Rotation of the Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization by a Stochastic Magnetic Field
• HI 21cm absorption beyond the epoch of re-ionization
• Cosmic Hydrogen Was Significantly Neutral a Billion Years After the Big Bang
• Evidence for a Cosmological Stromgren Surface and for Significant Neutral Hydrogen Surrounding the Quasar SDSS J1030+0524
• A Size of ~10 Mpc for the Ionized Bubbles at the End of Cosmic Reionization
• The 21 cm Forest: Radio Absorption Spectra as Probes of Minihalos Before Reionization
• The influence of non-uniform reionization on the CMB
• The Reionization History at High Redshifts II: Estimating the Optical Depth to Thomson Scattering from CMB Polarization
• Is Double Reionization Physically Plausible?
• Effective Screening due to Minihalos During the Epoch of Reionization
• Probing the Epoch of Early Baryonic Infall Through 21cm Fluctuations
• Reionization, SLOAN, and WMAP: is the Picture Consistent?
• Undetected Sources Allow Transmission of the Lyman-alpha Line From Galaxies Prior to Reionization
• Redshifted 21cm Signatures Around the Highest Redshift Quasars
• X-ray properties of UV-selected star forming galaxies at z~1 in the Hubble Deep Field North

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• A model of diffuse Galactic Radio Emission from 10 MHz to 100 GHz
• The 21cm angular-power spectrum from the dark ages
• The GMRT EoR Experiment: Limits on Polarized Sky Brightness at 150 MHz
• Lensing Reconstruction using redshifted 21cm Fluctuations
• UV pumping of hyperfine transitions in the light elements, with application to 21-cm hydrogen and 92-cm deuterium lines from the early universe
• Field Deployment of Prototype Antenna Tiles for the Mileura Widefield Array--Low Frequency Demonstrator
• Lensing reconstruction from line intensity maps: the impact of gravitational nonlinearity
• The Spin-Resolved Atomic Velocity Distribution and 21-cm Line Profile of Dark-Age Gas
• New probe of magnetic fields in the prereionization epoch. I. Formalism
• Lyman-$\alpha$ Polarization Intensity Mapping
• Ionospheric Attenuation of Polarized Foregrounds in 21 cm Epoch of Reionization Measurements: A Demonstration for the HERA Experiment
• Galactic Faraday rotation effect on polarization of 21 cm lines from the epoch of reionization
• Detecting primordial gravitational waves with circular polarization of the redshifted 21 cm line: I. Formalism
• Detecting primordial gravitational waves with circular polarization of the redshifted 21 cm line: II. Forecasts
• Statistical properties of polarized CMB foreground maps
• Clustering at 74 MHz
• Linear Polarization of the 21 cm Line from the Epoch of Reionization
• Cross-correlation of the Polarizations of the 21-cm and Cosmic Microwave Backgrounds
• Standard Model Prediction for Cosmological 21cm Circular Polarization
• Is a Classical Language Adequate in Assessing the Detectability of the Redshifted 21cm Signal from the Early Universe?