The Effect of Large Optical Depths on the Non-Gaussian 21-cm signal from Cosmic Dawn

Abstract

During the Cosmic Dawn (CD), the HI 21-cm optical depth ($\tau$ ) in the intergalactic medium can become significantly large. Consequently, the second and higher-order terms of $\tau$ appearing in the Taylor expansion of the HI 21-cm differential brightness temperature ($\delta T_{\rm b}$ ) become important. This introduces additional non-Gaussianity into the signal. We study the impact of large $\tau$ on statistical quantities of HI 21-cm signal using a suite of standard numerical simulations that vary X-ray heating efficiency and the minimum halo mass required to host radiation sources. We find that the higher order terms suppress statistical quantities such as skewness, power-spectrum and bispectrum. However, the effect is found to be particularly strong on the non-Gaussian signal. We find that the change in skewness can reach several hundred percent in low X-ray heating scenarios, whereas for moderate and high X-ray heating models changes are around $\sim40\%$ and $60\%$, respectively, for $M_{\rm h,min}=10^{9}\, {\rm M}_{\odot}$. This change is around $\sim 75\%$, $25\%$ and $20\%$ for low, moderate and high X-ray heating models, respectively, for $M_{\rm h,min}=10^{10}\, {\rm M}_{\odot}$. The change in bispectrum in both the halo cutoff mass scenarios ranges from $\sim 10\%$ to $\sim 300\%$ for low X-ray heating model. However, for moderate and high X-ray heating models the change remains between $\sim 10\%$ to $\sim 200\%$ for both equilateral and squeezed limit triangle configuration. Finally, we find that up to third orders of $\tau$ need to be retained to accurately model $\delta T_{\rm b}$, especially for capturing the non-Gaussian features in the HI 21-cm signal.