Stacking 21-cm Maps around Lyman-$\alpha$ Emitters during Reionization: Prospects for a Cross-correlation Detection with the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array

Abstract

Observations of the redshifted 21-cm line during the Epoch of Reionization will open a new window to probe the intergalactic medium during the formation of the first stars, galaxies, and black holes. A particularly promising route to an initial detection is to cross-correlate tomographic 21-cm maps with spectroscopically confirmed Lyman-$\alpha$ emitters (LAEs). High-redshift LAEs preferentially reside in ionized bubbles that are strongly anticorrelated with the surrounding neutral regions traced by 21-cm observations. In this work, we study the prospect of detecting such a cross-correlation signal by stacking 21-cm image cubes around LAEs using a current-generation 21-cm instrument -- the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA). Our forecast adopts a realistic mapping pipeline to generate foreground-free 21-cm image cubes. The statistical properties of these images, arising from the complex instrumental response, are carefully accounted for. We further introduce a physically motivated signal template calibrated on the THESAN radiation-hydrodynamic simulations, which connects the cross-correlation amplitude to the global neutral fraction. Our results show that a sample of ~50 spectroscopically confirmed LAEs is sufficient to begin constraining the reionization history. These results represent an important preparatory step toward joint analyses of 21-cm experiments with upcoming wide-area, high-redshift galaxy surveys from Euclid and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.