Demonstrating the feasibility of line intensity mapping using mock data of galaxy clustering from simulations
- Jefferson Laboratory of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (United States)
- Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard University, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
Visbal and Loeb (2010) have shown that it is possible to measure the clustering of galaxies by cross correlating the cumulative emission from two different spectral lines which originate at the same redshift. Through this cross correlation, one can study galaxies which are too faint to be individually resolved. This technique, known as intensity mapping, is a promising probe of the global properties of high redshift galaxies. Here, we test the feasibility of such measurements with synthetic data generated from cosmological dark matter simulations. We use a simple prescription for associating galaxies with dark matter halos and create a realization of emitted radiation as a function of angular position and wavelength over a patch of the sky. This is then used to create synthetic data for three different hypothetical instruments, one aboard the Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA), another consisting of a pair of ground based radio telescopes designed to measure the CO(1-0) and CO(2-1) emission lines, and one on the Cornell Caltech Atacama Telescope (CCAT). We find that the line cross power spectrum can be measured accurately from the synthetic data with errors consistent with the analytical prediction of Visbal and Loeb (2010). Removal of astronomical backgrounds and masking bright line emission from foreground contaminating galaxies do not prevent accurate cross power spectrum measurements.
- OSTI ID:
- 22277803
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2011, Issue 08; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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