Hydrogen 2p--2s transition: signals from the epochs of recombination and reionization

Details Hydrogen 2p--2s transition: signals from the epochs of recombination and reionization Hydrogen 2p--2s transition: signals from the epochs of recombination and reionization

2007-04-10

arxiv.org/abs/0704.1226v1

Astrophys.J.664:1-8,2007

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

17 pages, 1 figure, to appear in ApJ

Scientific paper

10.1086/518650

We propose a method to study the epoch of reionization based on the possible observation of 2p--2s fine structure lines from the neutral hydrogen outside the cosmological H {\sc ii} regions enveloping QSOs and other ionizing sources in the reionization era. We show that for parameters typical of luminous sources observed at $z \simeq 6.3$ the strength of this signal, which is proportional to the H {\sc i} fraction, has a brightness temperature $\simeq 20 \mu K$ for a fully neutral medium. The fine structure line from this redshift is observable at $\nu \simeq 1 \rm GHz$ and we discuss prospects for the detection with several operational and future radio telescopes. We also compute the characteristics of this signal from the epoch of recombination: the peak brightness is expected to be $\simeq 100 \mu K$; this signal appears in the frequency range 5-10 MHz. The signal from the recombination era is nearly impossible to detect owing to the extreme brightness of the Galactic emission at these frequencies.

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