Understanding reionization and cosmic dawn with galaxies and 21-cm

  • Published : 2018.05.08

Abstract

The properties of unseen high-redshift sources (and sinks) are encoded in the 3D structure of the cosmic 21-cm signal. Here I introduce a flexible parametrization for high-z galaxies' properties, including their star formation rates, ionizing escape fraction and their evolution with the mass of the host dark matter halos. With this parametrization, I self-consistently calculate the corresponding 21-cm signal during reionization and the cosmic dawn. Using a Monte Carlo Markov Chain sampler of 3D simulations, 21CMMC, I demonstrate how combining high-z luminosity functions with a mock 21-cm signal can break degeneracies, resulting in ~ percent level constraints on early universe astrophysics.

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