Signals of the cosmological reionization in the radio sky through C and O fine structure lines

TL;DR

This paper investigates the potential radio signals from fine structure lines of carbon and oxygen caused by UV photons during the epoch of cosmic reionization around redshift 10, assessing their detectability with future radio telescopes.

Contribution

It models the excitation of C I, C II, and O I fine structure lines by UV photons in reionization environments and evaluates their observability with upcoming radio arrays.

Findings

Signals are strongest in dense H I regions shielded from ionizing UV.

Redshifted UV photons induce detectable signals in idealized environments.

Next-generation radio telescopes could potentially observe these signals.

Abstract

We study the excitation of fine structure levels of C I, C II and O I by ultraviolet (UV) photons around strong UV sources which are also ionizing sources of the cosmological reionization at redshift of $\sim 10$. The evolutions of ionized regions around a point source are calculated by solving rate equations for non-equilibrium chemistry. Signals of UV photons through the fine structure lines are considered to be stronger at locations of more abundant chemical species of C I, C II and O I. Such environments would be realized where strong fluxes of non-ionizing UV line photons available for the pumping up of fine structure levels exist, and simultaneously ionizing UV photons are effectively shielded by dense H I regions. Signals from H I regions of moderately large densities induced by redshifted UV photons emitted at the point sources are found to be dominantly large over those of others. We discuss the detectability of the signals, and show that signals from idealized environments will be possibly detected by radio observations with next-generation arrays to come after the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).