Warm Dark Matter and the Formation of First Galaxies

By numerical integration of hydro-dynamical equations, we study the formation of elliptical and spiral galaxies starting from primordial linear density-velocity-gravitational perturbations. Both dark matter and baryons are included. Warm dark matter perturbations acquire two low mass cut-offs: the free-streaming cut-off due to the power spectrum free-streaming cut-off factor τ2(k), and the velocity dispersion cut-off. The Press-Schechter mass distribution does not include velocity dispersion, and should not be used below the velocity dispersion cut-off mass. From the formation of first galaxies and reionization, we estimate limits on the non-relativistic warm dark matter velocity dispersion at expansion parameter , with .

Direct measurement of the break-out ^(19)F(p,γ)^(20)Ne reaction in the China Jinping underground laboratory(CJPL)

Calcium production and the stellar evolution of first-generation stars remain fascinating mysteries in astrophysics.As one possible nucleosynthesis scenario,break-out from the hot carbon–nitrogen–oxygen(HCNO)cycle was thought to be the source of the calcium observed in these oldest stars.However,according to the stellar modeling,a nearly tenfold increase in the thermonuclear rate ratio of the break-out ^(19)F(p,γ)^(20) Ne reaction with respect to the competing ^(19)F(p,α)^(16) O back-processing reaction is required to reproduce the observed calcium abundance.We performed a direct measurement of this break-out reaction at the China Jinping underground laboratory.The measurement was performed down to the low-energy limit of E_(c.m.)=186 keV in the center-of-mass frame.The key resonance was observed at 225.2 keV for the first time.At a temperature of approximately 0.1 GK,this new resonance enhanced the thermonuclear ^(19)F(p,γ)^(20) Ne rate by up to a factor of≈7.4,compared with the previously recommended NACRE rate.This is of particular interest to the study of the evolution of the first stars and implies a stronger breakdown in their“warm”CNO cycle through the ^(19)F(p,γ)^(20) Ne reaction than previously envisioned.This break-out resulted in the production of the calcium observed in the oldest stars,enhancing our understanding of the evolution of the first stars.

The radio environment of the 21 Centimeter Array:RFI detection and mitigation

Detection and mitigation of radio frequency interference （RFI） is the first and also the key step for data processing in radio observations, especially for ongoing low frequency radio experiments towards the detection of the cosmic dawn and epoch of reionization （EoR）. In this paper we demonstrate the tech- nique and efficiency of RFI identification and mitigation for the 21 Centimeter Array （21CMA）, a radio interferometer dedicated to the statistical measurement of EoR. For terrestrial, man-made RFI, we concen- trate mainly on a statistical approach by identifying and then excising non-Gaussian signatures, in the sense that the extremely weak cosmic signal is actually buried under thermal and therefore Gaussian noise. We also introduce the so-called visibility correlation coefficient instead of conventional visibility, which allows a further suppression of rapidly time-varying RFI. Finally, we briefly discuss removals of the sky RFI, the leakage of sidelobes from off-field strong radio sources with time-invariant power and a featureless spec- trum. It turns out that state of the art technique should allow us to detect and mitigate RFI to a satisfactory level in present low frequency interferometer observations such as those acquired with the 21CMA, and the accuracy and efficiency can be greatly improved with the employment of low-cost, high-speed computing facilities for data acquisition and processing.

Extracting 21 cm signal by frequency and angular filtering

Extracting the neutral hydrogen （HI） signal is a great challenge for cosmological 21 cm experiments; both the astrophysical foregrounds and receiver noise are typically several orders of magnitude greater than the 21 cm signal. However, the different properties of the 21 cm signal, foreground and noise can be exploited to separate these components. The foregrounds are generally smooth or correlated over the frequency space along a line of sight （LOS）, while both the 21 cm signal and noise vary stochastically along the same LoS. The foreground can be removed by filtering out the smooth component in frequency space. The receiver noise is basically uncorrelated for observations at different times, hence for surveys it is also uncorrelated in different directions, while the 21 cm signal, which traces the large scale structure, is correlated up to certain scales. In this exercise, we apply Wiener filters in frequency and angular space to extract the 21 cm signals. We found that the method works well. Inaccurate knowl- edge about the beam could degrade the reconstruction, but the overall result is still good, showing that the method is fairly robust.

Estimation of HⅡBubble Size Distribution from 21 cm Power Spectrum with Artificial Neural Networks

The bubble size distribution of ionized hydrogen regions probes information about the morphology of HⅡbubbles during reionization.Conventionally,the HⅡbubble size distribution can be derived from the tomographic imaging data of the redshifted 21 cm signal from the epoch of reionization,which,however,is observationally challenging even for upcoming large radio interferometer arrays.Given that these interferometers promise to measure the 21 cm power spectrum accurately,we propose a new method,which is based on artificial neural networks,to reconstruct the HⅡbubble size distribution from the 21 cm power spectrum.We demonstrate that reconstruction from the 21 cm power spectrum can be almost as accurate as being directly measured from the imaging data with fractional error■10%,even with thermal noise at the sensitivity level of the Square Kilometre Array.Nevertheless,the reconstruction implicitly exploits the modeling in reionization simulations,and hence the recovered HⅡbubble size distribution is not an independent summary statistic from the power spectrum,and should be used only as an indicator for understanding HⅡbubble morphology and its evolution.

Reionizing Islands with Inhomogeneous Recombinations

Observations are beginning to constrain the history of the epoch of reionization(EoR).Modeling the reionization process is indispensable to interpret the observations,to infer the properties of ionizing sources,and to probe the various astrophysical processes from the observational data.Here we present an improved version of the seminumerical simulation islandFAST,by incorporating inhomogeneous recombinations and a corresponding inhomogeneous ionizing background,and simulate the reionization process of neutral islands during the late EoR.We find that the islands are more fragmented in models with inhomogeneous recombinations than the case with a homogeneous recombination number.In order to investigate the effects of basic assumptions in the reionization modeling,we compare the results from islandFAST with those from 21cmFAST for the same assumptions on the ionizing photon sources and sinks,to find how the morphology of the ionization field and the reionization history depend on the different treatments of these two models.Such systematic bias should be noted when interpreting the upcoming observations.

Cross-correlation of 21 cm and soft X-ray backgrounds during the epoch of reionization

The cross-correlation between the high-redshift 21 cm background and the Soft X-ray Background （SXB） of the Universe may provide an additional probe of the Epoch of Reionization. Here we use semi-numerical simulations to create 21 cm and soft X-ray intensity maps and construct their cross power spectra. Our results indicate that the cross power spectra are sensitive to the thermal and ionizing states of the intergalactic medium （IGM）. The 21 cm background correlates positively to the SXB on large scales during the early stages of the reionization. However as the reionization develops, these two back- grounds turn out to be anti-correlated with each other when more than - 15% of the IGM is ionized in a warm reionization scenario. The anti-correlated power reaches its maximum when the neutral fraction declines to 0.2-0.5. Hence, the trough in the cross power spectrum might be a useful tool for tracing the growth of HII regions during the middle and late stages of the reionization. We estimate the detectability of the cross power spectrum based on the abilities of the Square Kilometre Array and the Wide Field X-ray Telescope （WFXT）, and find that to detect the cross power spectrum, the pixel noise of X-ray images has to be at least 4 orders of magnitude lower than that of the WFXT deep survey.