Weakly interacting cold dark matter (CDM) particles, which are otherwise extremely successful in explaining various cosmological observations, exhibit a number of problems on small scales. One possible way of solving these problems is to invoke (so-called) warm dark matter (WDM) particles with masses m x ∼ keV. Since the formation of structure is delayed in such WDM models, it is natural to expect that they can be constrained using observations related to the first stars, e.g., the 21 cm signal from cosmic dawn. In this work, we use a detailed galaxy formation model, Delphi, to calculate the 21 cm signal at high-redshifts and compare this to the recent EDGES observations. We find that while CDM and 5 keV WDM models can obtain a 21 cm signal within the observed redshift range, reproducing the amplitude of the observations requires the introduction of an excess radio background. On the other hand, WDM models with m x < ∼ 3 keV can be ruled out since they are unable to match either the redshift range or the amplitude of the EDGES signal, irrespective of the parameters used.Comparable to values obtained from the low-redshift Lyman Alpha forest, our results extend constraints on the WDM particle to an era inaccessible by any other means; additional forthcoming 21 cm data from the era of cosmic dawn will be crucial in refining such constraints.
We aim to provide here the first data-constrained estimate of the metal-free (Population III; Pop III) star formation rate density $\dot{\rho }_{*}^{III}$ required at high redshifts ($z \lower.5ex\hbox{$\,\, \buildrel\gt \over \sim \,\,$}16$) in order to reproduce both the amplitude and the redshift of the EDGES 21-cm global signal. Our model accounts for the Ly α, radio, and X-ray backgrounds from both Pop III and metal-enriched Population II (Pop II) stars. For the latter, we use the star formation rate density estimates (and the Ly α background) from the Delphi semi-analytic model that has been shown to reproduce all key observables for galaxies at $z \lower.5ex\hbox{$\,\, \buildrel\gt \over \sim \,\,$}5$; the radio and X-ray backgrounds are fixed using low-z values. The constraints on the free parameters characterizing the properties of the Pop III stars are obtained using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis. Our results yield a $\dot{\rho }_{*}^{III}$ that while increasing from z ∼ 21 to 16 thereafter shows a sharp decline which is in excellent agreement with the results found by Valiante et al. to simulate the growth of z ∼ 6–7 quasars and their host galaxies, suggesting that the bulk of Pop III star formation occurs in the rarest and most massive metal-poor haloes at z ≲ 20. This allows Pop III stars to produce a rapidly growing Ly α background between z ∼ 21 and 15. Further, Pop III stars are required to provide a radio background that is about 3–4 orders of magnitude higher than that provided by Pop II stars although Pop II stars dominate the X-ray background.
We present a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)-based parameter estimation package, CosmoReionMC, to jointly constrain cosmological parameters of the ΛCDM model and the astrophysical parameters related to hydrogen reionization. The package is based on a previously developed physically motivated semi-analytical model for reionization, a similar semi-analytical model for computing the global 21 cm signal during the cosmic dawn and using an appropriately modified version of the publicly available CAMB for computing the CMB anisotropies. These calculations are then coupled to an MCMC ensemble sampler emcee to compute the posterior distributions of the model parameter. The model has twelve free parameters in total: five cosmological and seven related to the stellar populations. We constrain the parameters by matching the theoretical predictions with CMB data from Planck, observations related to the quasar absorption spectra and, for the first time, the global 21 cm signal from EDGES. We find that incorporating the quasar spectra data in the analysis tightens the bounds on the electron scattering optical depth τ and consequently the normalization As of the primordial matter power spectrum (or equivalently σ8). Furthermore, when we include the EDGES data in the analysis, we find that an early population of metal-free stars with efficient radio emission is necessary to match the absorption amplitude. The CosmoReionMC package should have interesting future applications, e.g. probing non-standard extensions to the ΛCDM model.
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