The effect of finite halo size on the clustering of neutral hydrogen

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the finite size of dark matter haloes affects the clustering of neutral hydrogen in 21cm intensity mapping, revealing that halo size causes a cancellation of white noise features and induces sub-Poissonian noise on large scales.

Contribution

It introduces a model accounting for halo size effects on HI clustering, showing how exclusion impacts the power spectrum and noise characteristics, which was not previously detailed.

Findings

Finite halo size cancels the white noise feature in the power spectrum.

Exclusion due to halo size causes sub-Poissonian noise on large scales.

The effects are consistent with N-body simulation results.

Abstract

Post-reionisation 21cm intensity mapping experiments target the spectral line of neutral hydrogen (HI) resident in dark matter haloes. According to the halo model, these discrete haloes trace the continuous dark matter density field down to a certain scale, which is dependent on the halo physical size. The halo physical size defines an exclusion region which leaves imprints on the statistical properties of HI. We show how the effect of exclusion due to the finite halo size impacts the HI power spectrum, with the physical boundary of the host halo given by the splashback radius. Most importantly, we show that the white noise-like feature that appears in the zero-momentum limit of the power spectrum is exactly cancelled when the finite halo size is taken into consideration. This cancellation in fact applies to all tracers of dark matter density field, including galaxies. Furthermore, we show that the exclusion due to finite halo size leads to a sub-Poissonian noise signature on large scales, consistent with the results from N-body simulations