Constraining Lyman-Werner Feedback from Velocity Acoustic Oscillations in the Cosmic Dawn 21 cm Signal

TL;DR

This study explores how Velocity Acoustic Oscillation features in the 21 cm signal can be used to constrain Lyman-Werner feedback effects on early star formation during Cosmic Dawn.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method using VAO features and neural networks to indirectly measure LW feedback strength from 21 cm observations.

Findings

VAO features are sensitive to the minimum halo mass affected by LW feedback.

Neural networks can accurately infer LW feedback efficiency from simulated VAO data.

Realistic SKA-low observations require over 10,000 hours of integration for meaningful constraints.

Abstract

During Cosmic Dawn, Pop III stars could be formed in minihalos through molecular hydrogen (H$_2$) cooling. The minimum halo mass required for H$_2$ cooling is highly sensitive to Lyman-Werner (LW) radiation, which dissociates H$_2$ and regulates star formation. However, the efficiency of LW feedback remains poorly constrained due to the lack of direct observations of Pop III stars. The dark matter-baryon relative streaming velocity suppresses star formation in low-mass halos and imprints characteristic Velocity Acoustic Oscillation (VAO) features in the 21 cm power spectrum. These features are particularly sensitive to the cooling threshold mass: if LW feedback raises the minimum halo mass above the streaming-sensitive regime, the VAO signal is strongly suppressed. This makes the VAO wiggles a promising indirect probe of LW feedback during Cosmic Dawn. We investigate the feasibility of constraining LW feedback parameters using semi-numerical 21 cm lightcone simulations. We compute the multi-frequency angular power spectrum (MAPS) to isolate the VAO features and train a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to infer the LW feedback efficiency and the baseline cooling threshold. We find that in the absence of instrumental noise, the LW feedback efficiency can be accurately recovered from the VAO features. However, for the SKA-low AA* configuration, meaningful constraints require integration times exceeding $10^4$ hours under optimistic foreground assumptions. Nonetheless, our results demonstrate that VAO features provide a physically robust and potentially powerful probe of LW feedback at Cosmic Dawn.