More Like this

1. COMAP Early Science. VIII. A Joint Stacking Analysis with eBOSS Quasars

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad2dfc  

   Dunne, Delaney A. ; Cleary, Kieran A. ; Breysse, Patrick C. ; Chung, Dongwoo T. ; Ihle, Håvard T. ; Bond, J. Richard ; Eriksen, Hans Kristian ; Gundersen, Joshua Ott ; Keating, Laura C. ; Kim, Junhan ; et al ( April 2024 , The Astrophysical Journal)

   We present a new upper limit on the cosmic molecular gas density atz= 2.4–3.4 obtained using the first year of observations from the CO Mapping Array Project (COMAP). COMAP data cubes are stacked on the 3D positions of 243 quasars selected from the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) catalog, yielding a 95% upper limit for flux from CO(1–0) line emission of 0.129 Jy km s⁻¹. Depending on the balance of the emission between the quasar host and its environment, this value can be interpreted as an average CO line luminosity$L_{\mathrm{CO}}^{\prime }$of eBOSS quasars of ≤1.26 × 10¹¹K km pc²s⁻¹, or an average molecular gas density${\rho }_{{\mathrm{H}}_2}$in regions of the Universe containing a quasar of ≤1.52 × 10⁸M_⊙cMpc⁻³. The$L_{\mathrm{CO}}^{\prime }$upper limit falls among CO line luminosities obtained from individually targeted quasars in the COMAP redshift range, and the${\rho }_{{\mathrm{H}}_2}$value is comparable to upper limits obtained from other line intensity mapping (LIM) surveys and their joint analyses. Further, we forecast the values obtainable with the COMAP/eBOSS stack after the full 5 yr COMAP Pathfinder survey. We predict that a detection is probable with this method, depending on the CO properties of the quasar sample. Based on the achieved sensitivity, we believe that this technique of stacking LIM data on the positions of traditional galaxy or quasar catalogs is extremely promising, both as a technique for investigating large galaxy catalogs efficiently at high redshift and as a technique for bolstering the sensitivity of LIM experiments, even with a fraction of their total expected survey data.

    

   more » « less
2. Boosting line intensity map signal-to-noise ratio with the Ly-α forest cross-correlation

   https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad1906  

   Qezlou, Mahdi ; Bird, Simeon ; Lidz, Adam ; Sun, Guochao ; Newman, Andrew_B ; Rudie, Gwen_C ; Ni, Yueying ; Croft, Rupert ; Di Matteo, Tiziana ( June 2023 , Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

   We forecast the prospects for cross-correlating future line intensity mapping (LIM) surveys with the current and future Ly-α forest measurements. Using large cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, we model the emission from the CO rotational transition in the CO Mapping Array Project LIM experiment at the 5-yr benchmark and the Ly-α forest absorption signal for extended Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BOSS), Dark energy survey instrument (DESI), and Prime Focus multiplex Spectroscopy survey (PFS). We show that CO × Ly-α forest significantly enhances the detection signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of CO, with up to $300{{\ \rm per\, cent}}$ improvement when correlated with the PFS Ly-α forest survey and a 50–75 per cent enhancement with the available eBOSS or the upcoming DESI observations. This is competitive with even CO × spectroscopic galaxy surveys. Furthermore, our study suggests that the clustering of CO emission is tightly constrained by CO × Ly-α forest due to the increased sensitivity and the simplicity of Ly-α absorption modelling. Foreground contamination or systematics are expected not to be shared between LIM and Ly-α forest observations, providing an unbiased inference. Ly-α forest will aid in detecting the first LIM signals. We also estimate that [C ii] × Ly-α forest measurements from Experiment for Cryogenic Large-Aperture Intensity Mapping and DESI/eBOSS should have a larger S/N than planned [C ii] × quasar observations by about an order of magnitude.

    

   more » « less
3. COMAP Early Science. V. Constraints and Forecasts at z ∼ 3

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac63c7  

   Chung, Dongwoo T. ; Breysse, Patrick C. ; Cleary, Kieran A. ; Ihle, Håvard T. ; Padmanabhan, Hamsa ; Silva, Marta B. ; Richard Bond, J. ; Borowska, Jowita ; Catha, Morgan ; Church, Sarah E. ; et al ( July 2022 , The Astrophysical Journal)

   Abstract We present the current state of models for the z ∼ 3 carbon monoxide (CO) line intensity signal targeted by the CO Mapping Array Project (COMAP) Pathfinder in the context of its early science results. Our fiducial model, relating dark matter halo properties to CO luminosities, informs parameter priors with empirical models of the galaxy–halo connection and previous CO (1–0) observations. The Pathfinder early science data spanning wavenumbers k = 0.051–0.62 Mpc −1 represent the first direct 3D constraint on the clustering component of the CO (1–0) power spectrum. Our 95% upper limit on the redshift-space clustering amplitude A clust ≲ 70 μ K 2 greatly improves on the indirect upper limit of 420 μ K 2 reported from the CO Power Spectrum Survey (COPSS) measurement at k ∼ 1 Mpc −1 . The COMAP limit excludes a subset of models from previous literature and constrains interpretation of the COPSS results, demonstrating the complementary nature of COMAP and interferometric CO surveys. Using line bias expectations from our priors, we also constrain the squared mean line intensity–bias product, Tb 2 ≲ 50 μ K 2 , and the cosmic molecular gas density, ρ H2 < 2.5 × 10 8 M ⊙ Mpc −3 (95% upper limits). Based on early instrument performance and our current CO signal estimates, we forecast that the 5 yr Pathfinder campaign will detect the CO power spectrum with overall signal-to-noise ratio of 9–17. Between then and now, we also expect to detect the CO–galaxy cross-spectrum using overlapping galaxy survey data, enabling enhanced inferences of cosmic star formation and galaxy evolution history. 

   more » « less
4. An Intensity Mapping Constraint on the CO-galaxy Cross-power Spectrum at Redshift ∼3

   https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ac4888  

   Keenan, Ryan P. ; Keating, Garrett K. ; Marrone, Daniel P. ( March 2022 , The Astrophysical Journal)

   The abundance of cold molecular gas plays a crucial role in models of galaxy evolution. While deep spectroscopic surveys of CO emission lines have been a primary tool for measuring this abundance, the difficulty of these observations has motivated alternative approaches to studying molecular gas content. One technique, line intensity mapping, seeks to constrain the average molecular gas properties of large samples of individually undetectable galaxies through the CO brightness power spectrum. Here we present constraints on the cross-power spectrum between CO intensity maps and optical galaxy catalogs. This cross-measurement allows us to check for systematic problems in CO intensity mapping data, and validate the data analysis used for the auto-power spectrum measurement of the CO Power Spectrum Survey. We place a 2σupper limit on the band-averaged CO-galaxy cross-power ofP_×< 540μK h⁻³Mpc³. Our measurement favors a nonzero 〈T_CO〉 at around 90% confidence and gives an upper limit on the mean molecular gas density atz∼ 2.6 of 7.7 × 10⁸M_⊙Mpc⁻³. We forecast the expected cross-power spectrum by applying a number of literature prescriptions for the CO luminosity–halo mass relation to a suite of mock light cones. Under the most optimistic forecasts, the cross-spectrum could be detected with only moderate extensions of the data used here, while more conservative models could be detected with a factor of 10 increase in sensitivity. Ongoing CO intensity mapping experiments will target fields allowing for extensive cross-correlation analysis and should reach the sensitivity required to detect the cross-spectrum signal.

    

   more » « less
5. Astrophysics & cosmology from line intensity mapping vs galaxy surveys

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2021/05/067  

   Schaan, Emmanuel ; White, Martin ( May 2021 , Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics)

   Abstract Line intensity mapping (LIM) proposes to efficiently observe distant faint galaxies and map the matter density field at high redshift.Building upon the formalism in a companion paper,we first highlight the degeneracies between cosmology and astrophysics in LIM.We discuss what can be constrained from measurements of the mean intensity and redshift-space power spectra.With a sufficient spectral resolution, the large-scale redshift-space distortions of the 2-halo term can be measured, helping to break the degeneracy between bias and mean intensity.With a higher spectral resolution, measuring the small-scale redshift-space distortions disentangles the 1-halo and shot noise terms.Cross-correlations with external galaxy catalogs or lensing surveys further break degeneracies.We derive requirements for experiments similar to SPHEREx, HETDEX, CDIM, COMAP and CONCERTO.We then revisit the question of the optimality of the LIM observables, compared to galaxy detection, for astrophysics and cosmology.We use a matched filter to compute the luminosity detection threshold for individual sources.We show that LIM contains information about galaxies too faint to detect, in the high-noise or high-confusion regimes.We quantify the sparsity and clustering bias of the detected sources and compare them to LIM, showing in which cases LIM is a better tracer of the matter density.We extend previous work by answering these questions as a function of Fourier scale, including for the first time the effect of cosmic variance, pixel-to-pixel correlations, luminosity-dependent clustering bias and redshift-space distortions. 

   more » « less