Large-Scale Non-Gaussianities in the 21 cm Background Anisotropies From the Era of Reionization

Abstract

The brightness temperature fluctuations in the 21 cm background related to neutral Hydrogen distribution provide a probe of physics related to the era of reionization when the intergalactic medium changed from a completely neutral to a partially ionized one. We formulate statistics of 21 cm brightness temperature anisotropies in terms of the angular power spectrum, the bispectrum, and the trispectrum. Using the trispectrum, we estimate the covariance related to the power spectrum measurements and show that correlations resulting from non-Gaussianities are below a percent, at most. While all-sky observations of the 21 cm background at arcminute-scale resolution can be used to measure the bispectrum with a cumulative signal-to-noise ratio of order a few ten, in the presence of foregrounds and instrumental noise related to first-generation interferometers, the measurement is unlikely to be feasible. For most purposes, non-Gaussianities in 21 cm fluctuations can be ignored and the distribution can be described with Gaussian statistics. Since 21 cm fluctuations are significantly contaminated by foregrounds, such as galactic synchrotron or low-frequency radio point sources, the lack of a significant non-Gaussianity in the signal suggests that any significant detection of a non-Gaussianity can be due to foregrounds. Similarly, in addition to frequency information that is now proposed to separate 21 cm fluctuations from foregrounds, if the non-Gaussian structure of foregrounds is a priori known, one can potentially use this additional information to further reduce the confusion.