Redshifted 21-cm bispectrum: Impact of the source models on the signal and the IGM physics from the Cosmic Dawn

TL;DR

This study investigates how different early universe source models influence the 21-cm bispectrum during Cosmic Dawn, revealing that the bispectrum's shape, sign, and magnitude are key to understanding IGM physics and source properties.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of the 21-cm bispectrum's sensitivity to source parameters, highlighting its advantages over the power spectrum for probing non-Gaussianity and IGM processes.

Findings

Bispectrum shape, sign, and magnitude effectively trace signal fluctuations.

Sign changes in the bispectrum are crucial for understanding IGM processes.

Small k-triangles in the squeezed limit best probe non-Gaussianity.

Abstract

The radiations from the first luminous sources drive the fluctuations in the 21-cm signal at Cosmic Dawn (CD) via two dominant astrophysical processes i.e. the Ly$\alpha$ coupling and X-ray heating, making this signal highly non-Gaussian. The impact of these processes on the 21-cm signal and its non-Gaussianity vary depending on the properties of these first sources of light. In this work, we consider different CD scenarios by varying two major source parameters i.e. the minimum halo mass $M_{\rm h,\, min}$ and X-ray photon production efficiency $f_{\rm X}$ in a 1D radiative transfer code GRIZZLY. We study the impact of variation in these source parameters on the large scale ($k_1 = 0.16 {\, \rm Mpc}^{-1}$) 21-cm bispectrum for all possible unique triangles in the Fourier domain. Our detailed and comparative analysis of the power spectrum and bispectrum shows that the shape, sign and magnitude of the bispectrum combinedly provide the best measure of the signal fluctuations and its non-Gaussianity compared to the power spectrum. We also conclude that it is important to study the sequence of sign changes along with the variations in the shape and magnitude of the bispectrum throughout the CD history to arrive at a robust conclusion about the dominant IGM processes at different cosmic times. We further observe that among all the possible unique $k$-triangles, the large-scale non-Gaussianity in signal is best probed by the small $k$-triangles in the squeezed limit and by triangles of similar shapes. This opens up the possibility of constraining the source parameters during the CD using the 21-cm bispectrum.