dc.contributor.author | Barkana, Rennan | |
dc.contributor.author | Loeb, Abraham | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2019-09-27T13:19:16Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2008 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Barkana, Rennan, and Abraham Loeb. 2008. “The Difference PDF of 21-Cm Fluctuations: A Powerful Statistical Tool for Probing Cosmic Reionization.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 384 (3): 1069–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.12729.x. | |
dc.identifier.issn | 0035-8711 | |
dc.identifier.issn | 1365-2966 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41417394 | * |
dc.description.abstract | A new generation of radio telescopes are currently being built with the goal of tracing the cosmic distribution of atomic hydrogen at redshifts 6-15 through its 21-cm line. The observations will probe the large-scale brightness fluctuations sourced by ionization fluctuations during cosmic reionization. Since detailed maps will be difficult to extract due to noise and foreground emission, efforts have focused on a statistical detection of the 21-cm fluctuations. During cosmic reionization, these fluctuations are highly non-Gaussian and thus more information can be extracted than just the one-dimensional function that is usually considered, i.e. the correlation function. We calculate a two-dimensional function that if measured observationally would allow a more thorough investigation of the properties of the underlying ionizing sources. This function is the probability distribution function (PDF) of the difference in the 21-cm brightness temperature between two points, as a function of the separation between the points. While the standard correlation function is determined by a complicated mixture of contributions from density and ionization fluctuations, we show that the difference PDF holds the key to separately measuring the statistical properties of the ionized regions. | |
dc.language.iso | en_US | |
dc.publisher | Oxford University Press | |
dash.license | LAA | |
dc.title | The difference PDF of 21-cm fluctuations: a powerful statistical tool for probing cosmic reionization | |
dc.type | Journal Article | |
dc.description.version | Version of Record | |
dc.relation.journal | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | |
dash.depositing.author | Loeb, Abraham::e022a3952362350ac8a0138f128a8be7::600 | |
dc.date.available | 2019-09-27T13:19:16Z | |
dash.workflow.comments | 1Science Serial ID 66281 | |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.12729.x | |
dash.source.volume | 384;3 | |
dash.source.page | 1069-1079 | |