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Villanueva-Domingo, P., Gariazzo, S., Gnedin, N. Y., & Mena, O. (2018). Was there an early reionization component in our universe? J. Cosmol. Astropart. Phys., 04(4), 024–17pp.
Abstract: A deep understanding of the epoch of reionization is still missing in our knowledge of the universe. While future probes will allow us to test the precise evolution of the free electron fraction from redshifts between z similar or equal to 6 and z similar or equal to 20, at present one could ask what kind of reionization processes are allowed by present cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization measurements. An early contribution to reionization could imply a departure from the standard picture where star formation determines the reionization onset. By considering a broad class of possible reionization parameterizations, we find that current data do not require an early reionization component in our universe and that only one marginal class of models, based on a particular realization of reionization, may point to that. In addition, the frequentist Akaike information criterion (AIC) provides strong evidence against alternative reionization histories, favoring the most simple reionization scenario, which describes reionization by means of only one (constant) reionization optical depth tau.
Keywords: cosmological parameters from CMBR; reionization
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Lopez-Honorez, L., Mena, O., & Villanueva-Domingo, P. (2019). Dark matter microphysics and 21 cm observations. Phys. Rev. D, 99(2), 023522–12pp.
Abstract: Dark matter interactions with massless or very light standard model particles, as photons or neutrinos, may lead to a suppression of the matter power spectrum at small scales and of the number of low mass haloes. Bounds on the dark matter scattering cross section with light degrees of freedom in such interacting dark matter (IDM) scenarios have been obtained from e.g., early time cosmic microwave background physics and large scale structure observations. Here we scrutinize dark matter microphysics in light of the claimed 21 cm EDGES 78 MHz absorption signal. IDM is expected to delay the 21 cm absorption features due to collisional damping effects. We identify the astrophysical conditions under which the existing constraints on the dark matter scattering cross section could be largely improved due to the IDM imprint on the 21 cm signal, providing also an explicit comparison to the WDM scenario.
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Villanueva-Domingo, P., Gnedin, N. Y., & Mena, O. (2018). Warm Dark Matter and Cosmic Reionization. Astrophys. J., 852(2), 139–7pp.
Abstract: In models with dark matter made of particles with keV masses, such as a sterile neutrino, small-scale density perturbations are suppressed, delaying the period at which the lowest mass galaxies are formed and therefore shifting the reionization processes to later epochs. In this study, focusing on Warm Dark Matter (WDM) with masses close to its present lower bound, i.e., around the 3. keV region, we derive constraints from galaxy luminosity functions, the ionization history and the Gunn-Peterson effect. We show that even if star formation efficiency in the simulations is adjusted to match the observed UV galaxy luminosity functions in both CDM and WDM models, the full distribution of Gunn-Peterson optical depth retains the strong signature of delayed reionization in the WDM model. However, until the star formation and stellar feedback model used in modern galaxy formation simulations is constrained better, any conclusions on the nature of dark matter derived from reionization observables remain model-dependent.
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Lopez-Honorez, L., Mena, O., Palomares-Ruiz, S., & Villanueva-Domingo, P. (2017). Warm dark matter and the ionization history of the Universe. Phys. Rev. D, 96(10), 103539–14pp.
Abstract: In warm dark matter scenarios structure formation is suppressed on small scales with respect to the cold dark matter case, reducing the number of low-mass halos and the fraction of ionized gas at high redshifts and thus, delaying reionization. This has an impact on the ionization history of the Universe and measurements of the optical depth to reionization, of the evolution of the global fraction of ionized gas and of the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, can be used to set constraints on the mass of the dark matter particle. However, the suppression of the fraction of ionized medium in these scenarios can be partly compensated by varying other parameters, as the ionization efficiency or the minimum mass for which halos can host star-forming galaxies. Here we use different data sets regarding the ionization and thermal histories of the Universe and, taking into account the degeneracies from several astrophysical parameters, we obtain a lower bound on the mass of thermal warm dark matter candidates of m(X) > 1.3 keV, or m(s) > 5.5 keV for the case of sterile neutrinos nonresonantly produced in the early Universe, both at 90% confidence level.
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Villanueva-Domingo, P., & Villaescusa-Navarro, F. (2021). Removing Astrophysics in 21 cm Maps with Neural Networks. Astrophys. J., 907(1), 44–14pp.
Abstract: Measuring temperature fluctuations in the 21 cm signal from the epoch of reionization and the cosmic dawn is one of the most promising ways to study the universe at high redshifts. Unfortunately, the 21 cm signal is affected by both cosmology and astrophysics processes in a nontrivial manner. We run a suite of 1000 numerical simulations with different values of the main astrophysical parameters. From these simulations we produce tens of thousands of 21 cm maps at redshifts 10 <= z <= 20. We train a convolutional neural network to remove the effects of astrophysics from the 21 cm maps and output maps of the underlying matter field. We show that our model is able to generate 2D matter fields not only that resemble the true ones visually but whose statistical properties agree with the true ones within a few percent down to scales 2 Mpc(-1). We demonstrate that our neural network retains astrophysical information that can be used to constrain the value of the astrophysical parameters. Finally, we use saliency maps to try to understand which features of the 21 cm maps the network is using in order to determine the value of the astrophysical parameters.
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