Radiative Transfer Simulations of Ly$\alpha$ Intensity Mapping During Cosmic Reionization Including Sources from Galaxies and the Intergalactic Medium

TL;DR

This paper presents advanced simulations of Ly$ extalpha$ intensity maps during cosmic reionization, incorporating radiative transfer effects and multiple sources, to better understand the IGM's neutral fraction and reionization history.

Contribution

The study introduces comprehensive Ly$ extalpha$ intensity mapping simulations including radiative transfer and various sources, providing new insights into the IGM's properties during reionization.

Findings

Reprocessed continuum emission is comparable to galaxy emission on large scales.

Power spectrum slope is sensitive to IGM neutral fraction, aiding reionization constraints.

Cross-correlation with galaxy surveys is detectable with high significance.

Abstract

We present new simulations of Lyman-$\alpha$ (Ly$\alpha$) intensity maps that include Ly$\alpha$ radiative transfer in the intergalactic medium (IGM) and all significant sources of Ly$\alpha$ photons. The sources considered include Ly$\alpha$ directly from galaxies, cooling at the edges of ionized bubbles, recombinations within these bubbles, and reprocessing of galaxy continuum emission in the IGM. We also vary astrophysical parameters including the average neutral fraction of the IGM, the dust absorption of Ly$\alpha$ in galaxies, and the ionizing escape fraction. Previous work has suggested that Ly$\alpha$ intensity mapping can be used to constrain the neutral fraction of the IGM when accounting for radiative transfer in the IGM. When radiative transfer is ignored, direct Ly$\alpha$ emission from galaxies has the highest amplitude of power on all scales. When we include radiative transfer in our simulations, we find continuum emission reprocessed as Ly$\alpha$ is comparable to the Ly$\alpha$ emission directly from galaxies on large scales. For high neutral fraction in the IGM, emission from recombinations is comparable to galaxies on large scales. We find that the slope of the power spectrum is sensitive to the neutral fraction of the IGM when radiative transfer is included, suggesting that this may be useful for placing constraints on cosmic reionization. In addition, we find the power of galaxies is decreased across all scales due to dust absorption. We also find the escape fraction must be large for recombinations and bubble edges to contribute significantly to the power. We find the cross power is observable between SPHEREx Ly$\alpha$ intensity maps and a hypothetical galaxy survey is observable with a total signal-to-noise of 4 from $k = 0.035$ Mpc$^{-1}$ to $k = 1$ Mpc$^{-1}$.