The gravitational and lensing-ISW bispectrum of 21 cm radiation. Issue 3 (17th December 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Schmit, Claude J; Heavens, Alan F; Pritchard, Jonathan R
• Is Part Of: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Volume 483:Issue 3(2019)
• Page Start: 4259
• Page End: 4275
• Publication Date: 2018-12-17
• Subjects: methods: statistical -- cosmological parameters -- large-scale structure of Universe; Astronomy -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 520.5
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty3400
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0035-8711

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Cosmic microwave background experiments from COBE to Planck have launched cosmology into an era of precision science, where many cosmological parameters are now determined to the per cent level. Next-generation telescopes, focusing on the cosmological 21 cm signal from neutral hydrogen, will probe enormous volumes in the low-redshift Universe, and have the potential to determine dark energy properties and test modifications of Einstein's gravity. We study the 21 cm bispectrum due to gravitational collapse as well as the contribution by line-of-sight perturbations in the form of the lensing-ISW bispectrum at low redshifts ($z$ ∼ 0.35−3), targeted by upcoming neutral hydrogen intensity mapping experiments. We compute the expected bispectrum amplitudes and use a Fisher forecast model to compare power spectrum and bispectrum observations of intensity mapping surveys by Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), MeerKAT, and SKA-mid. We find that combined power spectrum and bispectrum observations have the potential to decrease errors on the cosmological parameters by an order of magnitude compared to Planck . Finally, we compute the contribution of the lensing-ISW bispectrum, and find that, unlike for the cosmic microwave background analyses, it can safely be ignored for 21 cm bispectrum observations.