Cross Correlation of Pencil-Beam Galaxy Surveys and Line-Intensity Maps: An Application of the James Webb Space Telescope

TL;DR

This paper develops a formalism to forecast the sensitivity of cross-correlating line-intensity maps with pencil-beam galaxy surveys, demonstrating potential for high-redshift observations with JWST and other instruments.

Contribution

It introduces a new formalism for assessing the sensitivity of cross correlations between IM experiments and sparse pencil-beam galaxy surveys, including a simple formula for random configurations.

Findings

JWST combined with Lyα IM survey yields SNR ~5 after 100 hours.

Random pencil-beam arrangements have similar sensitivity to lattice configurations.

HERA's drift-scan strategy limits its effectiveness for this cross-correlation approach.

Abstract

Line-intensity mapping (IM) experiments seek to perform statistical measurements of large-scale structure with spectral lines such as 21cm, CO, and Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$). A challenge in these observations is to ensure that astrophysical foregrounds, such as galactic synchrotron emission in 21cm measurements, are properly removed. One method that has the potential to reduce foreground contamination is to cross correlate with a galaxy survey that overlaps with the IM volume. However, telescopes sensitive to high-redshift galaxies typically have small field of views (FOVs) compared to IM surveys. Thus, a galaxy survey for cross correlation would necessarily consist of pencil beams which sparsely fill the IM volume. In this paper, we develop the formalism to forecast the sensitivity of cross correlations between IM experiments and pencil-beam galaxy surveys. We find that a random distribution of pencil beams leads to very similar overall sensitivity as a lattice spaced across the IM survey and derive a simple formula for random configurations that agrees with the Fisher matrix formalism. We explore examples of combining high-redshift James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations with both a SPHEREx-like Ly$\alpha$ IM survey and a 21cm experiment based on the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA). We find that the JWST-SPHEREx case is promising, leading to a total signal-to-noise of ${\sim}5$ after 100 total hours of JWST (at $z=7$). We find that HERA is not well-suited for this approach owing to its drift-scan strategy, but that a similar experiment that can integrate down on one field could be.