The Theory and Simulation of the 21-cm Background from the Epoch of Reionization

TL;DR

This paper presents advanced large-scale simulations of the 21-cm background from the epoch of reionization, providing detailed predictions to guide future observations of the universe's early ionization history.

Contribution

It introduces the first high-resolution, large-volume simulations that resolve dwarf galaxy formation and ionizing radiation during reionization for accurate 21-cm background predictions.

Findings

Simulations resolve ionizing sources down to 10^8 solar masses.

Predicted 21-cm fluctuations can inform observational strategies.

Large-scale modeling captures statistical properties of reionization.

Abstract

The redshifted 21-cm line of distant neutral H atoms provides a probe of the cosmic ``dark ages'' and the epoch of reionization (``EOR'') which ended them. The radio continuum produced by this redshifted line can be seen in absorption or emission against the CMB at meterwaves, yielding information about the thermal and ionization history of the universe and the primordial density perturbation spectrum that led to galaxy and large-scale structure formation. Observing this 21-cm background is a great challenge. A new generation of low-frequency radio arrays is currently under development to search for this background. Accurate theoretical predictions of the spectrum and anisotropy of this background, necessary to guide and interpret future observations, are also quite challenging. It is necessary to model the inhomogeneous reionization of the intergalactic medium and determine the spin temperature of the 21-cm transition and its variations in time and space as it decouples from the temperature of the CMB. Here, we focus on just a few of the predictions for the 21-cm background from the EOR, based on our newest, large-scale simulations of patchy reionization. These simulations are the first with enough N-body particles (from 5 to 29 billion) and radiative transfer rays to resolve the formation of and trace the ionizing radiation from each of the millions of dwarf galaxies believed responsible for reionization, down to 10^8 M_solar, in a cubic volume large enough (90 and 163 comoving Mpc on a side) to make meaningful statistical predictions of the fluctuating 21-cm background. (abridged)