Multipole expansion for 21 cm intensity mapping power spectrum: Forecasted cosmological parameters estimation for the SKA observatory

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe measurement of the large-scale distribution of neutral hydrogen in the late Universe, obtained with radio telescopes through the hydrogen 21 cm line emission, has the potential to become a key cosmological probe in the upcoming years. We explore the constraining power of 21 cm intensity mapping observations on the full set of cosmological parameters that describe the ΛCDM model. We assume a single-dish survey for the SKA Observatory and simulate the 21 cm linear power spectrum monopole and quadrupole within six redshift bins in the range $z$ = 0.25–3. Forecasted constraints are computed numerically through Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques. We extend the sampler CosmoMC by implementing the likelihood function for the 21 cm power spectrum multipoles. We assess the constraining power of the mock data set alone and combined with Planck 2018 CMB observations. We find that 21 cm multipoles observations alone are enough to obtain constraints on the cosmological parameters comparable with other probes. Combining the 21 cm data set with CMB observations results in significantly reduced errors on all the cosmological parameters. The strongest effect is on Ωch2 and H0, for which the error is reduced by almost a factor four. The percentage errors we estimate are $\sigma _{\Omega _ch^2} = 0.25~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ and $\sigma _{H_0} = 0.16~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$, to be compared with the Planck only results $\sigma _{\Omega _ch^2} = 0.99~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ and $\sigma _{H_0} = 0.79~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$. We conclude that 21 cm SKAO observations will provide a competitive cosmological probe, complementary to CMB and, thus, pivotal for gaining statistical significance on the cosmological parameters constraints, allowing a stress test for the current cosmological model.