1. Determination of z~0.8 neutral hydrogen fluctuations using the 21 cm intensity mapping auto-correlation
- Author
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Switzer, E. R., Masui, K. W., Bandura, K., Calin, L. -M., Chang, T. -C., Chen, X. -L., Li, Y. -C., Liao, Y. -W., Natarajan, A., Pen, U. -L., Peterson, J. B., Shaw, J. R., and Voytek, T. C.
- Subjects
Astrophysics - Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics - Abstract
The large-scale distribution of neutral hydrogen in the Universe will be luminous through its 21 cm emission. Here, for the first time, we use the auto-power spectrum of 21 cm intensity fluctuations to constrain neutral hydrogen fluctuations at z~0.8. Our data were acquired with the Green Bank Telescope and span the redshift range 0.6 < z < 1 over two fields totalling ~41 deg. sq. and 190 h of radio integration time. The dominant synchrotron foregrounds exceed the signal by ~10^3, but have fewer degrees of freedom and can be removed efficiently. Even in the presence of residual foregrounds, the auto-power can still be interpreted as an upper bound on the 21 cm signal. Our previous measurements of the cross-correlation of 21 cm intensity and the WiggleZ galaxy survey provide a lower bound. Through a Bayesian treatment of signal and foregrounds, we can combine both fields in auto- and cross-power into a measurement of Omega_HI b_HI = [0.62^{+0.23}_{-0.15}] * 10^{-3} at 68% confidence with 9% systematic calibration uncertainty, where Omega_HI is the neutral hydrogen (HI) fraction and b_HI is the HI bias parameter. We describe observational challenges with the present data set and plans to overcome them., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. v2 as published; MNRASL (2013)
- Published
- 2013
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