Imprints of quasar duty cycle on the 21cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization

TL;DR

This paper models quasar emissions during the Epoch of Reionization to understand their impact on the 21-cm signal, revealing potential observable imprints of quasar duty cycles in 21-cm tomography.

Contribution

It introduces a new model for quasar luminosity functions during the EoR and explores their effects on the 21-cm signal, including duty cycle imprints and Ly-alpha contributions.

Findings

Radio-loud quasars can imprint duty cycle signatures on 21-cm tomography.

Typical quasars have negligible effects in SKA observations, but brighter quasars may produce detectable patterns.

The collective quasar effect on the 21-cm power spectrum is significant at low k, with potential observability in tomography.

Abstract

Quasars contribute to the 21-cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) primarily through their ionizing UV and X-ray emission. However, their radio continuum and Lyman-band emission also regulates the 21-cm signal in their direct environment, potentially leaving the imprint of their duty cycle. We develop a model for the radio and UV luminosity functions of quasars from the EoR, and constrain it using recent observations. Our model is consistent with the z~7.5 quasar from Banados et al 2017, and also predicts only a few quasars suitable for 21-cm forest observations (10mJy) in the sky. We exhibit a new effect on the 21-cm signal observed against the CMB: a radio-loud quasar can leave the imprint of its duty cycle on the 21-cm tomography. We apply this effect in a cosmological simulation and conclude that the effect of typical radio-loud quasars is most likely negligible in an SKA field of view. For a 1-10mJy quasar the effect is stronger though hardly observable at SKA resolution. Then we study the contribution of the lyman band Ly-alpha to Ly-beta) emission of quasars to the Wouthuisen-Field coupling. The collective effect of quasars on the 21-cm power spectrum is larger than the thermal noise at low k, though featureless. However, a distinctive pattern around the brightest quasars in an SKA field of view may be observable in the tomography, encoding the duration of their duty cycle. This pattern has a high signal-to-noise ratio for the brightest quasar in a typical SKA shallow survey.