Empowering line intensity mapping to study early galaxies

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust cross-correlation method to extract early galaxy line intensity signals from intensity mapping data, effectively mitigating foreground contamination and residual noise.

Contribution

A novel cross-correlation technique that accurately recovers line intensities in intensity mapping despite strong foreground residuals and noise.

Findings

Signal-to-noise ratio remains stable for noise up to 10 times the line variance.

Line intensity can be recovered within a factor of 2 even with 100 times the noise variance.

Method applicable to various lines like HI 21cm, [CII], HeII.

Abstract

Line intensity mapping is a superb tool to study the collective radiation from early galaxies. However, the method is hampered by the presence of strong foregrounds, mostly produced by low-redshift interloping lines. We present here a general method to overcome this problem which is robust against foreground residual noise and based on the cross-correlation function $\psi_{\alpha L}(r)$ between diffuse line emission and Ly$\alpha$ emitters (LAE). We compute the diffuse line (Ly$\alpha$ is used as an example) emission from galaxies in a $(800{\rm Mpc})^3$ box at $z = 5.7$ and $6.6$. We divide the box in slices and populate them with $14000(5500)$ LAEs at $z = 5.7(6.6)$, considering duty cycles from $10^{-3}$ to $1$. Both the LAE number density and slice volume are consistent with the expected outcome of the Subaru HSC survey. We add gaussian random noise with variance $\sigma_{\rm N}$ up to 100 times the variance of the Ly$\alpha$ emission, $\sigma_\alpha$, to simulate foregrounds and compute $\psi_{\alpha L}(r)$. We find that the signal-to-noise of the observed $\psi_{\alpha L}(r)$ does not change significantly if $\sigma_{\rm N} \le 10 \sigma_\alpha$ and show that in these conditions the mean line intensity, $I_{Ly\alpha}$, can be precisely recovered independently of the LAE duty cycle. Even if $\sigma_{\rm N} = 100 \sigma_\alpha$, $I_\alpha$ can be constrained within a factor $2$. The method works equally well for any other line (e.g. HI 21 cm, [CII], HeII) used for the intensity mapping experiment.