The Impact of Neutral Intergalactic Gas on Lyman-$\alpha$ Intensity Mapping During Reionization

TL;DR

This paper presents novel simulations of high-redshift Ly$ ext{α}$ intensity fields that incorporate IGM scattering, revealing how reionization affects spatial fluctuations and the potential for cross-correlation detection with galaxy surveys.

Contribution

First simulations of Ly$ ext{α}$ intensity mapping during reionization that include IGM scattering effects, highlighting the impact on spatial fluctuations and observational prospects.

Findings

Ly$ ext{α}$ scattering smooths small-scale fluctuations.

Reionization significantly alters the power spectrum slope.

Cross-correlation with galaxy surveys is detectable on large scales.

Abstract

We present the first simulations of the high-redshift Ly$\alpha$ intensity field that account for scattering in the intergalactic medium (IGM). Using a 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer code, we find that Ly$\alpha$ scattering smooths spatial fluctuations in the Ly$\alpha$ intensity on small scales and that the spatial dependence of this smoothing depends strongly on the mean neutral fraction of the IGM. Our simulations find a strong effect of reionization on $k=0.1-1~{\rm Mpc^{-1}}$, with $P_{\rm Ly\alpha}\propto k^{-1.75}$ for $\bar{x}_{\rm HI} = 0.63$ and $P_{\rm Ly\alpha} \propto k^{-2.2}$ for $\bar{x}_{\rm HI} = 0.86$ in contrast to $P_{\rm Ly\alpha}\propto k^{-1.5}$ after reionization. At wavenumbers of $k>1 ~ {\rm Mpc^{-1}}$, we find that the signal is sensitive to the emergent Ly$\alpha$ line profiles from galaxies. We also demonstrate that the cross-correlation between a Ly$\alpha$ intensity map and a future galaxy redshift survey could be detected on large scales by an instrument similar to SPHEREx, and over a wide range of scales by a hypothetical intensity mapping instrument in the vein of CDIM.