Multipole expansion for 21 cm intensity mapping power spectrum: forecasted cosmological parameters estimation for the ska observatory

Abstract

The measurement of the large-scale distribution of neutral hydrogen in the late Universe, obtained with radio telescopes through the hydrogen 21 cm line emission, has the potential to become a key cosmological probe in the upcoming years. We explore the constraining power of 21 cm intensity mapping observations on the full set of cosmological parameters that describe the CDM model. We assume a single-dish survey for the SKA Observatory and simulate the 21 cm linear power spectrum monopole and quadrupole within six redshift bins in the range z = 0.25–3. Forecasted constraints are computed numerically through Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques. We extend the sampler COSMOMC by implementing the likelihood function for the 21 cm power spectrum multipoles. We assess the constraining power of the mock data set alone and combined with Planck 2018 CMB observations. We find that 21 cm multipoles observations alone are enough to obtain constraints on the cosmological parameters comparable with other probes. Combining the 21 cm data set with CMB observations results in significantly reduced errors on all the cosmological parameters.