Constraining cosmology and ionization history with combined 21 cm power spectrum and global signal measurements
Abstract
Improvements in current instruments and the advent of next-generation instruments will soon push observational 21 cm cosmology into a new era, with high significance measurements of both the power spectrum and the mean (`global') signal of the 21 cm brightness temperature. In this paper, we use the recently commenced Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) as a worked example to provide forecasts on astrophysical and cosmological parameter constraints. In doing so, we improve upon previous forecasts in a number of ways. First, we provide updated forecasts using the latest best-fitting cosmological parameters from the Planck satellite, exploring the impact of different Planck data sets on 21 cm experiments. We also show that despite the exquisite constraints that other probes have placed on cosmological parameters, the remaining uncertainties are still large enough to have a non-negligible impact on upcoming 21 cm data analyses. While this complicates high-precision constraints on reionization models, it provides an avenue for 21 cm reionization measurements to constrain cosmology. We additionally forecast HERA's ability to measure the ionization history using a combination of power spectrum measurements and semi-analytic simulations. Finally, we consider ways in which 21 cm global signal and power spectrum measurements can be combined, and propose a method by which power spectrum results can be used to train a compact parametrization of the global signal. This parametrization reduces the number of parameters needed to describe the global signal, increasing the likelihood of a high significance measurement.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- April 2016
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1510.08815
- Bibcode:
- 2016MNRAS.457.1864L
- Keywords:
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- methods: data analysis;
- techniques: interferometric;
- dark ages;
- reionization;
- first stars;
- radio lines: general;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 16 pages, 8 figures. Revised to match accepted MNRAS version: expanded discussion of covariances between astrophysics and cosmology in Section 2.2, including two new figures