When galaxies burst: enhanced shot-noise for line-intensity mapping in the JWST era

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that recent JWST findings of increased star formation variability at high redshift significantly boost line-intensity mapping shot-noise predictions, affecting detectability and cosmological applications.

Contribution

It provides a closed-form correction for LIM shot-noise power spectrum incorporating JWST-era star formation burstiness, revealing new diagnostic opportunities.

Findings

Shot-noise boost factor B_Hα ≈ 7 at z≈6

Longer-window tracers have B ≈ 2.5-3.5, higher at greater redshift

Enhanced shot-noise improves auto-spectrum detection and reduces interloper contamination

Abstract

Recent JWST observations indicate that star formation at $z\!\sim\!4-6$ is more stochastic than previously assumed, with rms log-SFR scatter $\sim\!0.6$ dex at $M_h\!\sim\!10^{11}M_{\odot}$, growing toward smaller halos and time-correlated on $\sim\!25$ Myr. This is significantly higher than the typical $\sim\!0.3$ dex phenomenological lognormal scatter assumed in standard line-intensity mapping (LIM) forecasts. We propagate the JWST-era burstiness through to the LIM shot-noise power spectrum and show that the result is a simple multiplicative correction: the deterministic shot noise multiplied by a line-dependent boost factor $B_\lambda$ derived in closed form by convolving the SFR correlation function with the stellar-population-synthesis kernel of each line. At $z\!\sim\!6$, we find $B_{{\rm H}\alpha}\!\simeq\!7$ and $B\!\sim\!2.5$-$3.5$ for longer-window tracers ([CII], CO, UV) - factors of $\sim\!2$-$5$ above the standard prescription, and growing further toward higher redshift. The enhancement transforms the LIM landscape: it improves auto-spectrum detectability and suppresses lower-redshift interloper contamination, but degrades cosmological applications such as BAO that rely on a clean clustering measurement. Crucially, it also opens a new use of LIM as a diagnostic of high-redshift star-formation physics beyond the regime of individually resolved galaxies: redshift tomography of a single line constrains the amplitude and mass dependence of the burstiness, while cross-line shot-noise correlations probe its time coherence.