Detailed modelling of the 21-cm forest

Abstract

The 21-cm forest is a promising probe of the Epoch of Reionization. The local state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) is encoded in the spectrum of a background source (radio-loud quasars or gamma-ray burst afterglow) by absorption at the local 21-cmwavelength, resulting in a continuous and fluctuating absorption level. Small-scale structures (filaments and minihaloes) in the IGM are responsible for the strongest absorption features. The absorption can also be modulated on large scales by inhomogeneous heating and Wouthuysen-Field coupling. We present the results from a simulation that attempts to preserve the cosmological environment while resolving some of the small-scale structures (a few kpc resolution in a 50 h-1 Mpc box). The simulation couples the dynamics and the ionizing radiative transfer and includes X-ray and Lyman lines radiative transfer for a detailed physical modelling. As a result we find that soft X-ray self-shielding, Ly α self-shielding and shock heating all have an impact on the predicted values of the 21-cm optical depth of moderately overdense structures like filaments. A correct treatment of the peculiar velocities is also critical. Modelling these processes seems necessary for accurate predictions and can be done only at high enough resolution. As a result, based on our fiducial model, we estimate that LOFAR should be able to detect a few (strong) absorptions features in a frequency range of a few tens of MHz for a 20 mJy source located at z = 10, while the SKA would extract a large fraction of the absorption information for the same source.