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A Standard Ruler at Cosmic Dawn
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A Standard Ruler at Cosmic Dawn
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The matter in our Universe comes in two flavors: dark and baryonic. Of these, only the latter couples to photons, giving rise to the well-known baryon acoustic oscillations and, in the process, generating supersonic relative velocities between dark matter and baryons. These velocities---imprinted with the acoustic scale in their genesis---impede the formation of the first stars during cosmic dawn ($z\sim 20$), modulating the expected 21-cm signal from this era. In a companion paper we showed, combining numerical simulations and analytic models, that this modulation takes the form of robust velocity-induced acoustic oscillations (VAOs), with a well-understood shape that is frozen at recombination, and unaffected by the unknown astrophysics of star formation. Here we propose using these VAOs as a standard ruler at cosmic dawn. We find that three years of 21-cm power-spectrum data from the upcoming HERA interferometer should be able to measure the Hubble expansion rate $H(z)$ at $z=15-20$ to percent-level precision, ranging from $0.3\%$ to $11\%$ depending on the strength of astrophysical feedback processes and foregrounds. This would provide a new handle on the expansion rate of our Universe during an otherwise unprobed epoch, opening a window to the mysterious cosmic-dawn era.
Forward citations
Cited by 3 Pith papers
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The Rise and Fall of Acoustic Oscillations at Cosmic Dawn
Ignoring the percent-level phase offset between BAO and VAO features in the cosmic-dawn 21-cm power spectrum biases H(z) by ~2%; joint BAO–VAO templates are required for standard-ruler inference.
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Cosmological searches for the neutrino mass scale and mass ordering
Thesis summarizing an upper limit of 0.12 eV on the neutrino mass sum, bias calibration via CMB lensing cross-correlations, and tighter limits plus stronger normal-ordering preference in non-phantom dynamical dark ene...
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The Hubble Tension and Early Dark Energy
The Hubble tension between local and early-universe expansion-rate measurements may be resolved by early dark energy that speeds up expansion before recombination while satisfying existing constraints.
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