A Foreground Masking Strategy for [C II] Intensity Mapping Experiments Using Galaxies Selected by Stellar Mass and Redshift
Abstract
Intensity mapping provides a unique means to probe the epoch of reionization (EoR), when the neutral intergalactic medium was ionized by energetic photons emitted from the first galaxies. The [C II] 158 μm fine-structure line is typically one of the brightest emission lines of star-forming galaxies and thus a promising tracer of the global EoR star formation activity. However, [C II] intensity maps at 6 ≾ z ≾ 8 are contaminated by interloping CO rotational line emission (3 ⩽ J_(upp) ⩽ 6) from lower-redshift galaxies. Here we present a strategy to remove the foreground contamination in upcoming [C II] intensity mapping experiments, guided by a model of CO emission from foreground galaxies. The model is based on empirical measurements of the mean and scatter of the total infrared luminosities of galaxies at z < 3 and with stellar masses M* > 10^8 M⊙ selected in the K-band from the COSMOS/UltraVISTA survey, which can be converted to CO line strengths. For a mock field of the Tomographic Ionized-carbon Mapping Experiment, we find that masking out the "voxels" (spectral–spatial elements) containing foreground galaxies identified using an optimized CO flux threshold results in a z-dependent criterion m^(AB)_K ≾ 22 (or M* ≳ 10^9 M⊙)) at z < 1 and makes a [C II]/CO_(tot) power ratio of ≳10 at k = 0.1 h/Mpc achievable, at the cost of a moderate ≾ 8% loss of total survey volume.
Additional Information
© 2018 The American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 2017 October 27; revised 2018 February 19; accepted 2018 March 2; published 2018 March 29. The authors would like to thank the anonymous referee for valuable suggestions. The authors also acknowledge Ryan Quadri and Adam Muzzin for the continued support of our stacking program and the valuable insights from the near-infrared community. T.-C.C. acknowledges MoST grant 103-2112-M-001-002-MY3 and JPL R&TD Award 01STCR—R.17.226.063. J.H. is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1144469. A.C. was supported by a KISS postdoctoral fellowship and is now supported by the National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under Grant No. 1602677. M.B.S. acknowledges the Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research support through the VICI grant 639.043.006. M.P.V. acknowledges support by the US Department of Energy through a KIPAC Fellowship at Stanford University.Attached Files
Published - Sun_2018_ApJ_856_107.pdf
Submitted - 1610.10095.pdf
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Additional details
- Alternative title
- A Foreground Removal Strategy for future C[II] Intensity Mapping Experiments: Insights From Galaxies Selected by Stellar Mass and Redshift
- Eprint ID
- 77863
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170531-140121068
- 103-2112-M-001-002-MY3
- Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
- 01STCR-R.17.226.063
- JPL
- DGE-1144469
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
- Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS)
- AST-1602677
- NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellowship
- 639.043.006
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- Created
-
2017-05-31Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Keck Institute for Space Studies, Astronomy Department