Lyman-$\alpha$ coupling and heating at Cosmic Dawn

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the impact of Lyman-$\alpha$ photons on the cosmic dawn 21-cm signal, deriving new analytical expressions and showing that Ly-$\alpha$ heating is less significant than previously thought, aligning with recent EDGES observations.

Contribution

It introduces new analytical formulas for Ly-$\alpha$ scattering correction and cooling, and assesses the Ly-$\alpha$ heating's role in the 21-cm signal with a parameter study.

Findings

Ly-$\alpha$ heating is smaller than previously estimated by over two orders of magnitude.

A strong Ly-$\alpha$ background is necessary but not sufficient to explain the EDGES signal.

Even with a strong Ly-$\alpha$ background, the heating is compatible with EDGES measurements.

Abstract

The global 21-cm signal from the cosmic dawn is affected by a variety of heating and cooling processes. We investigate the impact of heating due to Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly~$\alpha$) photons on the global 21-cm signal at cosmic dawn using an analytical expression of the spectrum around the Ly~$\alpha$ resonance based on the so-called `wing approximation'. We derive a new expression for the scattering correction and for the first time give a simple close-form expression for the cooling due to injected Ly~$\alpha$ photons. We perform a short parameter study by varying the Ly~$\alpha$ background intensity by four orders of magnitude and establish that a strong Ly~$\alpha$ background is necessary, although not sufficient, in order to reproduce the recently detected stronger-than-expected 21-cm signal by the EDGES Collaboration. We show that the magnitude of this Ly~$\alpha$ heating is smaller than previously estimated in the literature by two orders of magnitude or more. As a result, even a strong Ly~$\alpha$ background is consistent with the EDGES measurement. We also provide a detailed discussion on different expressions of the Ly~$\alpha$ heating rate used in the literature.