Measurement of the Dark Matter Velocity Dispersion with Galaxy Stellar Masses, UV Luminosities, and Reionization

The root-mean-square of non-relativistic warm dark matter particle velocities scales as vhrms(a)=vhrms(1)/a , where a is the expansion parameter of the universe. This velocity dispersion results in a cut-off of the power spectrum of density fluctuations due to dark matter free-streaming. Let kfs (teq) be the free-streaming comoving cut-off wavenumber at the time of equal densities of radiation and matter. We obtain , and , at 68% confidence, from the observed distributions of galaxy stellar masses and rest frame ultra-violet luminosities. This result is consistent with reionization. From the velocity dispersion cut-off mass we obtain the limits vhrms(1)kfs (teq) >1.5 Mpc-1. These results are in agreement with previous measurements based on spiral galaxy rotation curves, and on the formation of first galaxies and reionization. These measured parameters determine the temperature-to-mass ratio of warm dark matter. This ratio happens to be in agreement with the no freeze-in and no freeze-out warm dark matter scenario of spin 0 dark matter particles decoupling early on from the standard model sector. Spin 1/2 and spin 1 dark matter are disfavored if nature has chosen the no freeze-in and no freeze-out scenario. An extension of the standard model of quarks and leptons, with scalar dark matter that couples to the Higgs boson that is in agreement with all current measurements, is briefly reviewed. Discrepancies with limits on dark matter particle mass that can be found in the literature are addressed.

External calibrator in global signal experiment for detection of the epoch of reionization

We present a conceptual design study of external calibrators in the 21 cm experiment towards detecting the globally averaged radiation of the epoch of reionization(EoR).Employment of external calibrator instead of internal calibrator commonly used in current EoR experiments allows removing instrumental effects such as beam pattern,receiver gain and instability of the system if the conventional three-position switch measurements are implemented in a short time interval.Furthermore,in the new design the antenna system is placed in an underground anechoic chamber with an open/closing ceiling to maximally reduce the environmental effect such as RFI and ground radiation/reflection.It appears that three of the four external calibrators proposed in this paper,including two indoor artificial transmitters and one outdoor celestial radiation(the Galactic polarization),fail to meet our purpose.Diurnal motion of the Galactic diffuse emission turns out to be the most probable source as an external calibrator,for which we have discussed the observational strategy and the algorithm of extracting the EoR signal.

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.

Semi-numerical simulation of reionization with semi-analytical modeling of galaxy formation

In a semi-numerical model of reionization, the evolution of ionization fraction is approximately simulated by the criterion of ionizing photon to baryon ratio. We incorporate a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation based on the Millennium II N-body simulation into the semi-numerical modeling of reionization. The semianalytical model is used to predict the production of ionizing photons, then we use the semi-numerical method to model the reionization process. Such an approach allows more detailed modeling of the reionization, and also connects observations of galaxies at low and high redshifts to the reionization history. The galaxy formation model we use was designed to match the low-z observations, and it also fits the high redshift luminosity function reasonably well, but its prediction about star formation falls below the observed value, and we find that it also underpredicts the stellar ionizing photon production rate, hence the reionization cannot be completed at z ~ 6. We also consider simple modifications of the model with more top heavy initial mass functions, which can allow the reionization to occur at earlier epochs. The incorporation of the semi-analytical model may also affect the topology of the HI regions during the epoch of reionization, and the neutral regions produced by our simulations with the semi-analytical model, which appeared less poriferous than the simple halo-based models.

Imprints on CMB Angular Power Spectrum Modes from Cosmological Reionization

The accurate understanding of the ionization history of the Universe plays a fundamental role in modern cosmology. It includes a phase of cosmological reionization after the standard recombination epoch, possibly associated to the early stages of structure and star formation. While the simple “τ-parametrization” of the reionization process and, in particular, of its imprints on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy likely represents a sufficiently accurate modelling for the interpretation of current CMB data, a great attention has been recently posed on the accurate computation of the reionization signatures in the CMB for a large variety of astrophysical scenarios and physical processes. The amplitude and shape of the B-mode Angular Power Spectrum (APS) depends, in particular, on the tensortoscalar ratio, r, related to the energy scale of inflation, and on the reionization history, thus an accurate modeling of the reionization process will have implications for the precise determination of r or to set more precise constraints on it through the joint analysis of E and B-mode polarization data available in the next future and from a mission of next generation. In this work we review some classes of astrophysical and phenomenological reionization histories, beyond the simpleτ-parametrization, a present a careful characterization of the imprints introduced in all the CMB APS modes. We have implemented a modified version of CAMB, the Cosmological Boltzmann code for computing the CMB anisotropy APS, to introduce the predicted hydrogen and helium ionization fractions. We compared the results obtained for these models for all the non-vanishing (in the assumed scenarios) modes of the CMB APS. Considering also the limitation from potential residuals of astrophysical foregrounds, we discussed the capability of next data to disentangle between different reionization scenarios in a wide range of tensor-to-scalar ratios.

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.

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.

The temperature of IGM at high redshifts:shock heating and high mach problem

The thermal history of cosmic gas in the dark ages remains largely unknown.It is important to quantify the impact of relevant physics on the IGM temperature between z=10 and z^30,in order to interpret recent and oncoming observations,including results reported by EDGES.We revisit the gas heating due to structure formation shocks in this era,using a set of fixed grid cosmological hydrodynamical simulations performed by three different codes.In all our simulations,the cosmic gas is predicted to be in multiphase state since z>30.The gas surrounding high density peaks gradually develops a relation more sharp than T∝ρ2/3,approximately T∝ρ2,from z=30 to z=11,might be due to shock heating.Meanwhile,the gas in void region tends to have a large local Mach number,and their thermal state varies significantly from code to code.In the redshift range 11-20,the mass fraction of gas shock heated above the CMB temperature in our simulations is larger than previous semi-analytical results by a factor of 2 to 8.At z=15,the fraction varies from^19%to 52%among different codes.Between z=11 and z=20,the gas temperature<1/TK>M-1 is predicted to be^10-20 K by two codes,much higher than the adiabatic cooling model and some previous works.However,in our simulations performed by RAMSES,<1/TK>M-1is predicted to be even below the temperature required to explain result of the EDGES.Given the fact that different codes give different predictions,currently,it seems a challenge to make solid prediction on the temperature of gas at z^17 in simulations.

My C.G.S.I.S.A.H. Theory of Dark Matter

Theory and observations concerning the cosmic reionization epoch are briefly discussed in the context of recent observations attributed to dark matter. A case is made that cold ground state interstellar atomic hydrogen of average density of about one atom per cubic centimeter (1.67 × 10-21?kg&#183;m-3?or 1.67 × 10-24?g&#183;cm-3) appears to be the most likely candidate to explain these observations.