Intensity Mapping in the Presence of Foregrounds and Correlated Continuum Emission

Abstract

Intensity mapping has attracted significant interest as an approach to measuring the properties of the interstellar medium in typical galaxies at high redshift. Intensity mapping measures the statistics of surface brightness as a function of frequency, making it sensitive to not only all line emission of interest but also radiation from all other sources. Significant effort has gone into developing approaches that reject foreground contamination. Additionally, the target galaxies have multiple sources of emission that can complicate the interpretation of the line brightness. We describe the problem of jointly estimating correlated continuum emission and cleaning uncorrelated continuum emission, such as from the Milky Way. We apply these considerations to a cross-correlation of Planck data with BOSS quasars for a determination of [C ii ] for . Intensity mapping surveys with few bands have unique challenges for treating foregrounds and avoiding bias from correlated continuum emission. We show how a future intensity mapping survey with many bands can separate line from continuum emission in cross-correlation.