Joint constraints on reionization: A framework for combining the global 21 cm signal and the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect

Recent measurements from the CMB and from high-redshift galaxy observations have placed rough constraints on the midpoint and duration of the epoch of reionization. Detailed measurements of the ionization history remain elusive, although two proposed probes show great promise for this purpose: the 21 cm global signal and the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect. We formally confirm the common assumption that these two probes are highly complementary, with the kSZ being more sensitive to extended ionization histories and the global signal to rapidly evolving ones. We do so by performing a Karhunen-Loève (KL) transformation, which casts the data in a basis designed to emphasize the information content of each probe. We find that reconstructing the ionization history using both probes gives significantly more precise results than individual constraints, although carefully chosen, physically motivated priors play a crucial part in obtaining a bias-free reconstruction. Additionally, in the KL basis, measurements from one probe can be used to detect the presence of residual systematics in the other, providing a safeguard against systematics that would go undetected when data from each probe is analyzed in isolation. Once detected, the modes contaminated by systematics can be discarded from the data analysis to avoid biases in reconstruction.