Intensity mapping of the 21 cm emission: lensing

Abstract

In this paper we study lensing of 21 cm intensity mapping (IM). Like in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), there is no first order lensing in intensity mapping. The first effects in the power spectrum are therefore of second and third order. Despite this, lensing of the CMB power spectrum is an important effect that needs to be taken into account, which motivates the study of the impact of lensing on the IM power spectrum. We derive a general formula up to third order in perturbation theory including all the terms with two derivatives of the gravitational potential, i.e. the dominant terms on sub-Hubble scales. We then show that in intensity mapping there is a new lensing term which is not present in the CMB. We obtain that the signal-to-noise of 21 cm lensing for futuristic surveys like SKA2 is about 10. We find that surveys probing only large scales, ℓmax ≲ 700, can safely neglect the lensing of the intensity mapping power spectrum, but that otherwise this effect should be included.