Detectability of 21-cm signal during the epoch of reionization with 21-cm-Lyman-α emitter cross-correlation – III. Model dependence

Abstract

ABSTRACT Detecting H i 21-cm line in the intergalactic medium during the epoch of reionization suffers from foreground contamination such as Galactic synchrotron and extragalactic radio sources. Cross-correlation between the 21-cm line and Lyman-α emitter (LAE) galaxies is a powerful tool to identify the 21-cm signal since the 21-cm line emission has correlation with LAEs, while the LAEs are statistically independent of the foregrounds. So far, the detectability of 21-cm-LAE cross-power spectrum has been investigated with simple LAE models where the observed Lyα luminosity is proportional to the dark matter halo mass. However, the previous models were inconsistent with the latest observational data of LAEs obtained with Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC). Here, we revisit the detectability of 21-cm-LAE cross-power spectrum adopting a state-of-the-art LAE model consistent with all Subaru/HSC observations such as the Lyα luminosity function, LAE angular autocorrelation, and the LAE fractions in the continuum selected galaxies. We find that resultant cross-power spectrum with the updated LAE model is reduced at small scales ($k\sim 1\ \rm Mpc^{-1}$) compared to the simple models, while the amplitudes at large scales ($k \lesssim 0.2 \ \rm Mpc^{-1}$) are not affected so much. We conclude that the large-scale signal would be detectable with Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and HSC LAE cross-correlation but detecting the small-scale signal would require an extended HSC LAE survey with an area of $\sim 75\ \rm deg^2$ or 3000 h observation time of 21-cm line with SKA.