J. Astrophys. Astr.

(0000) 000: ####

DOI

Studying Cosmic Dawn using redshifted HI 21-cm signal: A brief review

Ankita Bera1,* , Raghunath Ghara2 , Atrideb Chatterjee3 , Kanan K. Datta4 , Saumyadip Samui1,5
1
Department of Physics, Presidency University, 86/1 College Street, Kolkata 700073, India.
2
ARCO (Astrophysics Research Center), Department of Natural Sciences, The Open University of Israel, 1
University Road, PO Box 808, Ra’anana 4353701, Israel.
3
National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, TIFR, Post Bag 3, Ganeshkhind, Pune 411007, India.
4
Department of Physics and Relativity and Cosmology Research Centre, Jadavpur University, 188, Raja S.C.
arXiv:2210.12164v1 [[Link]] 21 Oct 2022

Mallick Rd, Kolkata 700032, India.

5
School of Astrophysics, Presidency University, 86/1 College Street, Kolkata 700073, India.
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [Link]@[Link]

MS received XXX; accepted YYY

Abstract. In this review article, we briefly outline our current understanding of the physics associated with
the HI 21-cm signal from cosmic dawn. We discuss different phases of cosmic dawn as the ambient gas and the
background radiations evolve with the redshift. We address the consequences of several possible heating sources
and radiation background on the global 21-cm signal. We further review our present perspective of other important
aspects of the HI 21-cm signal such as the power spectrum and imaging. Finally, we highlight the future key
measurements of the Square Kilometre Array and other ongoing/upcoming experiments that will enlighten our
understanding of the early Universe.

Keywords. galaxies: high-redshift — intergalactic medium — cosmology: theory.

1. Introduction epoch of reionization (EoR).

There are mainly two separate approaches by which
Our Universe came into existence with a Big Bang at the cosmological HI 21-cm signal from the CD/EoR
approximately 13.6 billion years ago. Universe got can be detected, namely, measurements of (i) global
cooled as it expanded adiabatically, and over time, dif- HI 21-cm signal, and, (ii) statistical signal such as
ferent ingredients of our Universe froze out. Quarks HI power spectrum, Bi-spectrum etc. Several on-
froze out first, then protons, and neutrons, followed by going and upcoming experiments such as the Ex-
electrons. Finally, about 370, 000 years after the Big periment to Detect the Global reionization Signa-
Bang, hydrogen, the first atoms, started to form by re- ture (EDGES)(Bowman et al., 2018a), Shaped An-
combination of protons with the free electrons. With tenna measurement of the background RAdio Spectrum
the formation of these first hydrogen atoms, the uni- (SARAS)(Singh et al., 2021), Large-Aperture Exper-
verse entered in a period called ‘Dark age’. During iment to Detect the Dark Ages (LEDA) (Price et al.,
this time, hydrogen was mostly neutral until the first 2018), the Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cos-
stars, quasars, and/or the first generation of galaxies ap- mic Hydrogen (REACH) (De & Acedo, 2019) etc. are
peared. The ignition of the first stars marked the end dedicated to detect the global HI 21-cm signal. How-
of the Dark age and the beginning of ‘Cosmic Dawn’ ever, the global HI 21-cm signal can not retain infor-
(CD). It happened approximately 100 million years af- mation regarding the spatial distribution of HI field and
ter the Big Bang. However, it is extremely difficult sources, and provide only the global evolution of the
to directly observe these early Universe faint sources HI differential brightness temperature. Radio interfer-
as they are beyond the reach of our present-day tele- ometric telescopes such as the Giant Metrewave Ra-
scopes. Therefore, observations of redshifted 21-cm dio Telescope (GMRT) (Ali et al., 2008; Ghosh et al.,
signal from the neutral hydrogen have became the most 2012; Pal et al., 2021), the Murchison Widefield Ar-
promising tool for studying the cosmic dawn (Furlan- ray (MWA) (Beardsley et al., 2016; Ewall-Wice et al.,
etto et al., 2006a; Pritchard & Loeb, 2012; Cooray 2016; Patwa et al., 2021), Low Frequency Array (LO-
et al., 2019; Padmanabhan, 2021) and the subsequent FAR) (Patil et al., 2017; Mertens et al., 2020), the

© Indian Academy of Sciences 1

#### Page 2 of 22 J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: ####

Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) (De- 2. Fundamentals of 21 cm signal: Global signal and
Boer et al., 2017; Abdurashidova et al., 2022b), and power spectrum
the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) (Mellema et al.,
2015) are devoted to probe the spatial fluctuations in The quantity of interest in the context of the cosmolog-
the HI 21-cm signal during cosmic dawn and reioniza- ical 21-cm signal is the differential HI brightness tem-
tion. Along with the statistical signal the SKA should perature (δT b ). It is defined as the excess brightness
also be able to provide images of HI 21-cm field com- temperature relative to a background radio temperature
ing from cosmic dawn and EoR. and redshifted to the present observer, and is given by
In the view of these ongoing/upcoming facilities, it (Bharadwaj & Ali, 2005),
is extremely important that we have a thorough under-
standing of the cosmological HI signal expected from Ωb h2 0.7 ρHI
! ! ! !
H0
CD and EoR. There have been enormous progresses δT b (n, z) = 4.0 mK(1 + z) 2
0.02 h H(z) ρ¯H
both on the theoretical understanding of the signal and
(1 + z) ∂v
!" #
Tγ
observational side over the last two decades. Here, we 1− 1− . (1)
present a short review on the cosmological HI 21 cm Ts H(z) ∂r
signal from cosmic dawn. In particular, we focus on
the first luminous sources (e.g., Population III and Pop- Here, ρHI is the density of the neutral hydrogen whereas
ulation II type stars), impact of various radiation back- ρ̄H is the mean hydrogen density, and n is the direction
grounds (e.g., Ly-α, X-ray, Radio background) and of light propagation. Further, (ρHI /ρ̄H ) arises due to the
physical processes (IGM heating due to cosmic rays, non-uniform distribution of hydrogen, and the term in-
magnetic fields, X-ray ) on the HI 21-cm signal dur- side the square brackets arises due to the redshift space
ing the cosmic dawn. Readers are requested to follow distortion in which ∂v/∂r is the divergence of the pecu-
the other companion review article Shaw et al. (2022), liar velocity along the line of sight (Bharadwaj & Ali,
which focuses on the HI 21-cm signal from the epoch 2004). Moreover, T γ is the background temperature
of reionization and various observational challenges in of radio photons, mostly dominated by the cosmic mi-
order to detect the signal. crowave background radiation (CMBR) but there could
The outline of this article is as follows: we briefly be other candidates that can produce background radi-
outline the fundamentals of 21-cm signal in Section 2. ation (we discuss this in Sec. 4.3). T s is the hydro-
Section 3. discusses our understanding on the early gen spin temperature which is determined by the rela-
sources (Pop III and Pop II ) during cosmic dawn. Fur- tive population of the singlet and triplet states of neutral
ther, different radiation backgrounds, and possible heat- hydrogen atom. It is clear from Eq. 1 that 21-cm sig-
ing/cooling mechanisms of inter-galactic medium dur- nal will be in the absorption or emission depending on
ing cosmic dawn are described in Section 4. and 5. whether T s < T γ or T s > T γ respectively. The spin
respectively. Section 6. focuses on global HI 21 cm temperature is related to the gas kinetic temperature T K
signal resulting from various semi-analytical models and background temperature T γ as (Field 1958; also see
and simulations. Next, we focus on the current sta- Furlanetto, Oh, & Briggs 2006a for a detailed review),
tus of the understanding of HI 21-cm signal power
spectrum (Section 7.). Then in Section 8., we discuss T γ−1 + xα T α−1 + xc T g−1
T s−1 = , (2)
prospects of parameter estimation using measured HI 1 + xα + xc
power spectrum. Further, the topological aspects of the
21 cm signal is presented in Section 9. Subsequently where, T α is the color temperature corresponds to the
in Section 10., we discuss the prospects of a joint anal- Lyman-α radiation field. As the Lyman-α photons get
ysis of the statistical and global signal for better con- absorbed and emitted repeatedly by hydrogen atoms,
straining the models of CD. Finally, in Section 11., we they are in equilibrium with H-atom, so T α = T K during
present a summary. Throughout this article we assume cosmic dawn period. The coupling coefficients, xc and
a flat, ΛCDM cosmology with the cosmological param- xα depend on the different processes such as Ly-α cou-
eters obtained from recent Planck 2018 (Planck Col- pling (due to Wouthuysen-Field mechanism Wouthuy-
laboration et al., 2020) observation, i.e. ΩΛ = 0.69, sen, 1952; Field, 1958), and collisional coupling due to
Ωm = 0.31, Ωb = 0.049, and the Hubble parameter the collisions between two hydrogen atoms, hydrogen
H0 = 67.66 km/s/Mpc, unless otherwise mentioned. atom and an electron or the H-atom and a proton.
The Wouthuysen-Field coupling coefficient is given
by (Pritchard & Loeb, 2012),

16π2 T ∗ e2 fα
xα = S α Jα , (3)
27A10 T γ me c
J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000)000: #### Page 3 of 22 ####

where fα = 0.4162 is the oscillator strength for the Ly- collisional ionization coefficient, γe (T K ) = 0.291 ×
α transition. Further, Jα is the Ly-α photon intensity exp(−U)
10−7 × U 0.39 0.232+U cm3 /s (Minoda et al., 2017) with
which will be discussed in Sec. 4.1. Moreover, S α is h p να = 10.2 eV and U = |E1s /kB T K |. Further, Ṅγ is the
a correction factor of order unity which takes care of rate of UV photons escaping into the IGM and nH (z)
the redistribution of photon energies due to the repeated is the proper number density of the hydrogen atoms
scattering off the thermal distribution of atoms (Chen & (Barkana & Loeb, 2001).
Miralda-Escudé, 2004). Also, T ∗ = h p νe /kB = 0.068 K Global signal experiments attempt to detect the sky-
is the characteristic temperature for the HI 21-cm tran- averaged hδT b i where the average is taken over all di-
sition. The total collisional coupling coefficient can be rections of sky at a particular redshift. Thus the globally
written as a sum of coupling between H-H, H-p, H-e− , averaged differential brightness temperature, δT b (z) is
pH
(xcHH , xc , xceH respectively), and is given by, given by,

xc = xcHH + xceH + xc
pH
Ωb h2
! ! !
(4) 0.7 H0
δT b (z) = 4.0 mK(1 + z) 2
T ∗ HH pH 0.02 h H(z)
= κ (T K )nH + κ10
eH
(T K )ne + κ10 (T K )np .
A10 T γ 10 ρHI
! !
Tγ
× 1− . (6)
ρ¯H Ts
pH
All the specific rate coefficient values, κ10 , κ10 ,
HH eH
and κ10
are given in Pritchard & Loeb (2012). As the Universe Experiments such as the EDGES, SARAS, LEDA,
was mostly filled with hydrogen during cosmic dawn, REACH etc. are trying to detect this global 21-cm sig-
pH
κ10
HH
dominate over κ10 eH
, and κ10 throughout this period. nal.
Although, this collisional coupling is a dominant pro- While single antenna based experiments can only
cess during dark ages, so the coupling between T s and measure the redshift evolution of the sky averaged HI
T K happens due to the Ly-α coupling during cosmic 21-cm signal, the radio interferometers such as the
dawn. GMRT, MWA, LOFAR, HERA are sensitive to the spa-
Note that, ρHI , and the number density of hydrogen tial fluctuations of the signal. Due to limited sensitiv-
(nH ), electron (ne ), and proton (np ) are determined by ity, the presently operating radio interferometers aim to
the ionization state of the inter-galactic medium (IGM). measure these spatial fluctuations in terms of different
This can be obtained by the evolution in the ionized statistical quantities such as the variance, power spec-
fraction of hydrogen (xe ) which can be written as, trum of the signal, etc (Ali et al., 2008; Harker et al.,
2012; Patil et al., 2014; Mertens et al., 2020; Ross
 
  h p να 
 et al., 2021). The most straightforward way to mea-
dxe −
= C p βe (T γ ) (1 − xe ) e kB T K − αe (T K ) xe nH (z)
  2
 sure these fluctuations in a radio interferometric ob-
dz    servation is through the power spectrum, which is the
 Fourier transform of the 2-point correlation function of

Ṅγ  dt the signal. The power spectrum of the HI 21-cm signal
+ γe (T K ) nH (z)(1 − xe )xe +  . P21 (k, z) can be expressed as,
nH (z)  dz
0 0

(5) hT˜b (k, z)T˜b∗ (k , z)i = (2π)3 δD (k − k )P21 (k, z), (7)

Here the evolution in ionization fraction is affected where, T˜b (k, z) is the Fourier transform of δT b (n,
0
z), δD
due to the photoionization by CMBR photons, re- is the 3D dirac delta function while k and k are the
combination, collisional ionization, and photoioniza- comoving wavevectors. Normally the power spectrum
tion by UV photons respectively. The photoioniza- is represented in terms of the dimensionless quantity as,
tion co-efficient, βe can be calculated using the re-
2πme kB T γ
3/2 −E2s /kB T γ
lation, βe (T γ ) = αe (T γ ) h2p
e (Seager k3 P21 (k, z)
et al., 1999, 2000). The recombination co-efficient, ∆2 (k, z) = . (8)
atb
2π2
αe (T K ) = F × 10−19 ( 1+ct d) m s
3 −1
, where a = 4.309,
b = −0.6166, c = 0.6703, d = 0.53, F = 1.14 (the This quantity also represents the power per unit loga-
fudge factor) and t = 10T4KK . The Peebles factor is de- rithmic interval in k-scale. The redshift space HI 21-
fined by C p = 1+K(Λ+β
1+KΛ(1−x)nH
, where Λ = 8.3 s−1 is the cm power spectrum carries information about the large
e )(1−x)nH
transition rate from (hydrogen ground state) 2s → 1s scale distribution of the HI field, dark matter and, thus,
λ3α can be decomposed into different components related
state through two photons decay, and K = 8πH(z) . The to power spectra of pure dark matter, HI fraction etc
#### Page 4 of 22 J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: ####

(Mao et al., 2012; Majumdar et al., 2013; Ghara et al., Tegmark et al., 1997; Mebane et al., 2018; Bera et al.,
2015a). 2022, for detailed modelling of Pop III star formation).
Although the currently operating radio interferom- It was shown by Tegmark et al. (1997) that the H2 frac-
eters have limited sensitivity, upcoming low-frequency tion of a halo varies as,
telescope such as SKA1-low will have ∼ 10 times
higher sensitivity than the telescope like LOFAR. With fH2 ≈ 3.5 × 10−4 T 31.52 (9)
such a high sensitivity, SKA1-low will be able to de-
tect the epoch of reionization and cosmic dawn signal where T 3 = T vir /103 K, and a halo can host Pop III stars
statistically, and to produce the tomographic images of if this fraction exceeds a critical value, given by,
the HI 21-cm signal from these epochs as well. We
will discuss prospects of detecting such HI images later −1
10T 37/2 
!−3/2 
−4 1+z 1 +

in section 9.. These tomographic images, as well as fcrit,H2 ≈ 1.6 × 10 
δT b (z) and ∆2 (k, z) of the signal from the cosmic dawn 20 60 + T 34 
!
and EoR, are crucially dependent on the properties of 0.512K
the sources present during these epochs. The source de- exp . (10)
T3
pendence in Eq. 1 appears through the neutral fraction
of hydrogen ( ρρ¯HIH ), spin temperature (T S ) and any ex- Note that, the star formation mechanism in minihalos
cess radio background produced from the sources. We are still ongoing research topic, and in particular the
shall discuss how different types of sources and radi- initial mass function of Pop III stars are poorly con-
ation backgrounds impact the signal in the following strained (Abe & Tashiro, 2021; Parsons et al., 2021;
sections. Lazar & Bromm, 2022; Gessey-Jones et al., 2022).
Several people use the top heavy IMF model (mass of
star, M∗ > 100M ) due to metal-free cooling and inef-
3. Early sources during cosmic dawn ficient fragmentation (Bromm et al., 1999; Abel et al.,
2002). Even a halo can host a single such massive star.
After the epoch of recombination, for the first few hun- Further, the final stages of these stars, and their effect on
dred million years, the Universe was mostly filled with IGM are also governed by their initial masses. In fact,
neutral hydrogen and helium atoms. In the hierarchical the HI 21-cm signal from cosmic dawn would provide
structure formation, the dark matter halos were formed a very good test-bed for these models.
by gravitational collapse. The baryons (primordial hy- Once the first generation of stars enrich the IGM
drogen and helium) were pulled into the potential wells with metals, the metal-enriched Population II (hereafter
created by the dark matter halos. As the gas cools and Pop II) stars began to form in the atomic cooling ha-
gas mass exceeds the Jeans mass, first stars started to los. The properties of these stars are quite similar to the
form. Existing theoretical studies (Bromm & Larson, stars that we see today, and their properties are much
2004; Abel et al., 2002) suggest that the first stars thus more constrained compared to Pop III stars. There al-
formed were massive, luminous, and metal-free, known ready exist several models of Pop II stars that are well-
as Population III (hereafter Pop III) stars. They are constrained by different observational evidence (Cole
likely to produce copious amount of UV photons, and et al., 2000; Choudhury & Ferrara, 2005, 2006; Ben-
strongly affect the high redshift IGM, in turn the cosmic son, 2012; Samui, 2014; Dayal & Ferrara, 2018). The
21-cm signal during cosmic dawn (Fialkov & Barkana, number density of the pop III stars is expected to de-
2014; Yajima & Khochfar, 2015; Mirocha et al., 2018; crease rapidly at z . 15 once the LW feedback be-
Mebane et al., 2018; Tanaka et al., 2018; Schauer et al., comes significant. Thus, the major contribution to the
2019; Chatterjee et al., 2020; Bera et al., 2022; Muñoz ionization of the IGM neutral hydrogen is expected to
et al., 2022; Hibbard et al., 2022). come from Pop II stars inside the first galaxies. Given
The first stars are likely to form in minihalos with a dark matter halo of mass Mhalo , the amount of stellar
virial temperature T vir ∼ 300 − 104 K that can cool via mass contained, intrinsic spectral energy distribution,
molecular H2 cooling (Barkana & Loeb, 2001). The IMF, escape fraction of these ionizing photons, etc. are
H2 cooling depends on the amount of molecular hydro- still uncertain for these early galaxies. Thus, numeri-
gen present in a halo, which can be dissociated in pres- cal simulations of EoR generally work under simplified
ence of a background of Lyman-Werner (LW) photons pictures of Pop II star formation. Most of these sim-
(see details in Sec. 4.2). Thus, whether a halo can host ulations assume simple scaling relations between the
Pop III stars or not depends on the critical amount of total stellar mass and the hosting dark matter halo mass
molecular hydrogen present along with the feedback of (Ghara et al., 2015b; Ross et al., 2019; Greig et al.,
LW radiation created by the first stars themselves (see 2021a). The impact of the fraction of baryons residing
J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000)000: #### Page 5 of 22 ####

within the stars in a galaxy, the average number of ion- ries photon due to the expansion of the Universe. Such
izing photons per baryon produced in the stars, and the a photon can get absorbed by the ground state hydro-
escape fraction of the UV photons are degenerate on gen atom, and then there are two possibilities through
the ionization/thermal states of the IGM. Thus, many which Ly-α photon gets generated. Either this excited
studies ( e.g., Iliev et al. (2012); Ghara & Mellema hydrogen atom cascades down to n = 2 state first and
(2020); Maity & Choudhury (2022)) treat the product finally from n = 2 to n = 1 state by producing a Ly-α
of all these quantities as a single parameter termed as photon, or directly jumps into the ground state which
ionization efficiency parameter. While semi-numerical produces another Ly-n photon that can eventually pro-
simulations (e.g., Majumdar et al. (2011); Greig et al. duce a Ly-α photon by the first process. Readers are
(2021a); Maity & Choudhury (2022)) do not have pro- requested to check the details on the cascading of Ly-n
vision to adopt the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) photons given in Pritchard & Furlanetto (2006).
of the galaxies, the radiative transfer simulations such The Ly-α background is generally estimated using
as Mellema et al. (2006); Partl et al. (2011); Ghara proper Ly-α photon intensity which is defined as the
et al. (2015b) use SEDs of such early galaxies assum- spherically averaged number of photons striking per
ing simple forms such as a blackbody spectrum or using unit area, per unit frequency, per unit time, and per
a SED generated from population synthesis codes such steradian. It is given by,
as PEGASE (Fioc & Rocca-Volmerange, 1997). The
nmax 0
(1 + z)2 X
Z zmax (n)
ionizing photons emitted from the galaxies not only cdz 0 0

ionize the neutral hydrogen in the IGM but also sup- Jα = frecycle (n) 0 (νn , z ), (11)
4π n=2 z H(z )
press star formation in low-mass galaxies due to ther-
mal feedback. Thus, the star formation inside dark mat- where, the summation over the atomic level n is trun-
ter halos with mass Mhalo . 109 M becomes inefficient cated at nmax ' 23 to exclude the levels for which the
if those halos remained inside ionized regions (Ghara horizon resides within HII region of an isolated galaxy
et al., 2018; Ross et al., 2021). as pointed out by Pritchard & Furlanetto (2006). Fur-
Apart from the stars and galaxies, impact of mini- ther, the probability of generating a Ly-α photon from a
quasars and quasars have also been studied in the con- Ly-n photon is characterised by frecycle (n), and the val-
text of HI 21-cm signal from cosmic dawn (Venkate- ues for different levels can be obtained from Pritchard
san et al., 2001; Thomas & Zaroubi, 2011; Ghara et al., & Furlanetto (2006). As the cascading of Ly-n photons
2015a). As soon as the first luminous sources appeared, actually delays the onset of strong Wouthuysen-Field
they started to emit UV photons, Lyman-series pho- coupling, one should include that in the Ly-α flux cal-
tons, and X-rays. X-rays may also be produced by dif- culation. Moreover, The absorption at a level n at red-
ferent sources such as supernova remnants (SNR), and shift z corresponds to a frequency which is emitted at
miniquasars (Glover & Brand, 2003; Furlanetto, 2006; 0
a higher redshift, z , and this frequency can be written
Haiman, 2016). Some contribution of UV photons are in terms of Lyman limit frequency, νLL as (Barkana &
also expected from quasars and AGNs (Willott et al., Loeb, 2005),
2010; Madau & Haardt, 2015). All these are likely to
0
produce feedback on IGM as well as the subsequent 0 1+z
star formation. Thus one needs to model these in a self νn = νLL (1 − n−2 ) . (12)
1+z
consistent manner, and we describe them in the next
section. But the photon to be available at Ly-α resonance at a
redshift z, should have been emitted below a redshift
of,
4. Radiation background
[1 − (1 + n)−2 ]
zmax (n) = (1 + z) − 1, (13)
4.1 Ly-α background (1 − n−2 )
With the formation of first generation of stars, the so that it can participate in this process. In this way, the
photons get emitted at all frequencies depending on contribution of photons emitted between consecutive
the mass of the stars, and they affect the surrounding atomic levels to the total flux get summed up. More-
medium. In particular, the Ly-α photons alter the spin over, we multiply Jα with the normalization parameter
states of the neutral hydrogen atom, and thus affect the fα to incorporate the uncertainty in the IMF of the first
spin temperature, T s . Therefore one needs to calcu- stars and escape of Ly-α photons. Further, (ν, z) in
late the Ly-α background radiation generated from first Eq. 11 is the comoving photon emissivity, defined as
stars to obtain the 21-cm signal. A photon having fre- the number of photons emitted by stars at redshift z per
quency greater than Ly-α gets redshifted into a Ly-n se- unit comoving volume, per proper time and frequency,
#### Page 6 of 22 J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: ####

and at rest frame frequency ν. It is generally obtained tained from the star formation rate density as,
from the star formation rate density, ρ̇∗ at a given red-
ρ̇∗ NLW ELW
!
shift, and is related by,
(z) = . (16)
m p ∆νLW
ρ̇∗
(ν, z) = b (ν), (14)
mp Here, the average energy of a LW photon, ELW =
11.9 eV, and the LW frequency band, νLW = 5.8 × 1014
where, m p is the mass of proton. The spectral distribu- Hz (Mebane et al., 2018). Further, NLW is the num-
tion function of the sources, or the number of photons ber of photons per baryon of stars in the energy range
produced per baryon of stars, b (ν) depends on the ini- 11.5 − 13.6 eV, and the corresponding numbers for
tial masses and the composition of the stars. It is gen- Pop III and Pop II stars are already mentioned in the
erally modelled as a power law b (ν) ∝ ναs −1 with the previous Sec. 4.1.
spectral index of α s . The values of α s for Pop III and
Pop II stars are 1.29 and 0.14 respectively. The spec- 4.3 Excess radio background
tral distribution function is normalised to emit 4800
and 9690 photons per baryon between Ly-α and Lyman In the standard galaxy formation modelling, the back-
limit frequencies for Pop III and Pop II stars respec- ground radiation T γ (appeared in Eq. 2 ) is assumed
tively, whereas the corresponding numbers between Ly- to have contribution only from CMB radiation. How-
α and Ly-β frequencies are 2670 and 6520 (Barkana & ever, observation with LWA1 (Dowell & Taylor, 2018),
Loeb, 2005). Note that, apart from the coupling of T s ARCADE-2 (Fixsen et al., 2011) reported detection of
to T K , Ly-α could also heat up the IGM which has been excess radio background. The origin of this excess ra-
studied in Chen & Miralda-Escudé (2004); Furlanetto dio background is still not clear. For example, Seiffert
& Pritchard (2006); Ghara & Mellema (2020); Mittal et al. (2011) argued that our own Milky Way galaxy
& Kulkarni (2021). can produce this radio background, whereas some other
studies (Mirocha & Furlanetto, 2019a; Feng & Holder,
4.2 Lyman-Werner background 2018a; Ewall-Wice et al., 2020; Mittal & Kulkarni,
2022) have proposed that high-z sources like radio loud
The first generation of stars not only emits the Ly-α black holes, bright luminous galaxies, Pop III super-
photons but also produces a background of Lyman- nova and even primordial black holes (Mittal & Kulka-
Werner (LW) radiation. The photons in the LW band rni, 2022) can produce such excess radio background.
possess energy in the range between 11.5-13.6 eV, and If we assume the later scenario to be true, then it be-
can photo-dissociate the molecular H2 . As the Pop III comes necessary to model the background temperature
stars form in a halo where gas cools via molecular hy- T γ to have contribution from both CMBR and the ex-
drogen cooling mechanism, the presence of LW pho- cess radio background, and therefore, T γ should be ex-
tons acts as a negative feedback for Pop III star for- pressed as
mation. If a halo is present in a LW background, the
Pop III star formation gets affected depending on the T γ = T CMB + T R , (17)
amount of LW flux and the feedback can even com-
pletely stop Pop III star formation in low mass halos. where, T CMB is the CMBR temperature and T R is the
Therefore the required minimum mass for a Pop III temperature coming from the excess radio background.
star to form as mentioned in Sec. 3. gets modified (for As shown in Chatterjee et al. (2020), the radiation
deatils see Mebane et al., 2018). flux received at redshift z, can be computed using
The flux of Lyman-Werner background can be writ-
!αR
ten as (Visbal et al., 2014), c(1 + z)3 ∞
dt0
Z
1420
FR (z) = R,ν0 (z0 ) dz0 , (18)
Z zm 150 4π z dz0
c dt 0 0
JLW (z) = 0 (1 + z) (z )dz ,
3
(15)
4π z dz where R,ν0 (z0 ) is the comoving radio emissivity at ν0 =
150 MHz(1 + z0 )/(1 + z), and αR is the radio spectral in-
where, c is the speed of light, and zm is the maximum dex which is usually assumed to be −0.7 (Gürkan et al.,
redshift that a photon gets generated and redshifted into 2018). Once the flux is computed, one can then cal-
the Lyman series at redshift z. It can be calculated us- culate the radio background temperature T R using the
1+z = 1.04, assuming a 4% of photons
ing the relation, 1+z m
Rayleigh-Jeans law.
in the LW band get redshifted before hitting Ly-α line
0
(Visbal et al., 2014). Further, (z ) is the specific LW
comoving luminosity density which again can be ob-
J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000)000: #### Page 7 of 22 ####

5. Possible heating/cooling sources during cosmic et al., 2012),

dawn !
Ṁ∗
LX = 3.4 × 10 fX 33
J s−1 . (20)
The IGM kinetic temperature is an important quantity M yr−1
that needs to be estimated for calculating the spin tem-
perature (see Eq. 2) and the HI 21-cm signal during The globally averaged X-ray energy density which
cosmic dawn. The evolution of the IGM temperature helps in heating IGM can then be written as,
T K can be written as,
ρ̇∗
!
QX = 3.4 × 10 fX × fh
33
J s−1 Mpc−3 ,
dT K 2T K 8σT aSB T γ4  xe  M yr−1 Mpc−3
= − Tγ − TK (21)
dz 1 + z 3me cH(z)(1 + z) 1 + xe
2 X
− Qi , (19) where, ρ˙∗ represents the global star formation rate den-
3nH kB i sity whereas, fh denotes the fraction of X-ray which
helps in heating the IGM. This value is generally taken
where, kB , σT , and σSB are the Boltzmann constant, to be ∼ 0.3 for standard X-ray heating analysis (Furlan-
Thomson scattering cross-section, and Stefan Boltz- etto et al., 2006a).
mann constant respectively. In the first two terms, here
we consider the adiabatic cooling due to the expansion 5.2 Heating due to cosmic rays
of the Universe and the Compton heating due to the in-
teraction between CMBR and free electrons. Further, Along with X-rays, there are other possible candidates
Qi includes any other possible heating/cooling pro- that can heat the IGM substantially. One such candi-
cesses that we describe next. There are several possible date is cosmic ray protons that are generated in the ter-
mechanisms by which the IGM can be heated up such mination shocks of supernova explosion (Sazonov &
as heating due to soft X-ray, cosmic rays, Ly-α pho- Sunyaev, 2015; Leite et al., 2017; Jana et al., 2019;
tons, magnetic field, Dark Matter decay/annihilation Bera et al., 2022). It is well known that the SNe are
(Pritchard & Furlanetto, 2007; Ghara et al., 2015a; the main sources for high energy cosmic rays. Given
Ghara & Mellema, 2020; Sethi, 2005; Sazonov & Sun- the expected top-heavy IMF of Pop III stars, they are
yaev, 2015; Chen & Miralda-Escudé, 2004; Sethi & all likely to explode as a SNe that can accelerate copi-
Subramanian, 2005; Furlanetto et al., 2006b; Liu & ous amount of cosmic rays. Due to the smaller sizes
Slatyer, 2018), and we discuss some of them in the fol- of the host galaxies as well as the higher energetics of
lowing sections. the Pop III SNe, the cosmic rays are likely to be gener-
ated outside the virial radius of the halo and can escape
5.1 X-ray Heating to the IGM easily (Sazonov & Sunyaev, 2015). These
cosmic rays (mostly the low energy protons) interact
X-ray photons can be produced by early sources with the IGM via collision and transfer their energy to
such as, accreting black holes, miniquasars, supernova the thermal gas.
shocks or X-ray binaries, that can easily escape from While traversing through IGM, the low energy pro-
galaxies, and can increase the temperature of the IGM. tons (. 30 MeV) interact with the neutral hydrogen and
The determining factors for the X-ray heating are the free e− . In case of collision with free e− , the entire en-
number and the spectral shape of the X-ray photons. As ergy loss by these particles becomes the thermal energy
no observational evidence exists in case of high redshift of the IGM, whereas, the interaction between cosmic
Universe, the X-ray heating modelling are limited by ray protons and neutral hydrogen results in the primary
the uncertainty of both the aforementioned factors. Ma- and secondary ionizations, and finally contribute to the
jority of the works, present in the literature, takes a con- heating (see Schlickeiser, 2002, for detailed analysis of
servative and simple approach (e.g., Furlanetto et al., cosmic ray interactions). Thus cosmic rays resulting
2004, 2006a; Mirocha & Furlanetto, 2019b; Chatterjee from Pop III stars can potentially alter the thermal state
et al., 2021). This approach simply assumes a correla- of the IGM, and hence the spin temperature, T s during
tion between the star formation rate ( Ṁ∗ ) and the X-ray cosmic dawn (Bera et al., 2022).
luminosity (LX ) of a galaxy at high-z, which is moti- On contrary to Pop III halos, the low energy protons
vated by the observed correlation prevailing in the local generated from the SNe exploding in massive atomic
Universe. It also includes a free parameter, fX , which is cooling halos, get confined within the galaxy itself.
an unknown normalization factor allowing one to take However, the high energy protons are likely to escape
into account the differences between the local and high- from these halos like our milky way galaxy, and can
z Universe. The correlation can be expressed as (Mineo contribute to the heating. In this case, if a sufficient
#### Page 8 of 22 J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: ####

magnetic field is present in the IGM, these high energy path increases which cause a reduction in viscosity of
cosmic ray particles gyrate along the magnetic field the fluids. As a consequence, the fluids Reynolds num-
lines and excite magnetosonic Alfvèn waves. When ber increases which generate the decaying fluid turbu-
these waves get damped, the energy gets transferred to lence. This turbulence can transfer energy from the
the thermal gas, and can potentially change the temper- magnetic field to the IGM. So, the magnetic field en-
ature of the IGM (Kulsrud & Pearce, 1969; Skilling, ergy gets transferred to the IGM through the ambipolar
1975; Bell, 1978; Kulsrud, 2004). diffusion and decaying magneto-hydrodynamic turbu-
In both cases of cosmic rays generated from Pop III lence processes which is likely to the change the IGM
and Pop II stars, the amount of heating depends on the temperature (Sethi, 2005).
total energy density of cosmic rays, and hence the ef- A detailed modelling of the magnetic energy dis-
ficiency with which the cosmic rays are accelerated in sipation, and consequently the heating and ionization
SNe. This efficiency, CR can be as high as 30% (Kang due to presence of magnetic field is discussed in Sethi
& Jones, 2005). The total energy density of cosmic rays (2005); Minoda et al. (2019); Bera et al. (2020); Bhatt,
can also be calculated from the star formation rate den- Jitesh R. et al. (2020); Natwariya & Bhatt (2020). The
sities as, heating rate (in units of energy per unit time per unit
! volume) due to the ambipolar diffusion, ΓAD can be
ESN written as,
ĖCR (z) = 10 CR fSN (1 + z)
−30 3
1051 erg
ρ̇∗ (z) (1 − xe ) |(∇ × B) × B|2
!
× , (22) ΓAD = , (23)
M yr−1 Mpc−3 γxe ρ2b 16π2

where, ECR (z) is the energy density per unit physical where, ρb is the baryon mass density at redshift z, and
volume, and in units of erg s−1 cm−3 . Here, ESN is the the coupling coefficient between the ionized and neutral
kinetic energy of the supernova which may differ for components is γ = 1.94 × 1014 (T K /K)0.375 cm3 gm−1 s−1
different type of supernovae such as, pair-instability (Sethi, 2005; Chluba et al., 2015). Here, the Lorentz
SNe and core-collapse SNe that one considers. Further, force is approximated as, |(∇ × B) × B|2 , and the de-
the number of SNe explosions per solar mass of stars is tailed calculation of it is given in Chluba et al. (2015);
fSN which also depends on the initial mass function of Kunze & Komatsu (2014).
the stars. Another heating rate due to the decaying turbulence
As mentioned earlier, in case of cosmic rays gener- is given by,
ated in Pop II stars, the possible mechanism of heating
!#m
is via the generation of magnetosonic waves which de-
"
ti
pends on the amount of magnetic field present in the ln 1 +
3m td
IGM. Apart from this, the IGM magnetic field can also ΓDT = !#m+1 H(z) ρB (z), (24)
2 1 + zi
" !
alter the temperature via ambipolar diffusion and de- ti
ln 1 + + 2 ln
3
caying turbulence mechanisms that we discuss in the td 1+z
next section.
where m = 2 (nB + 3)/(nB + 5), and nB is the spec-
5.3 Heating due to the magnetic field tral index corresponding to the primordial magnetic
field. The physical decay time scale for turbulence
At the recombination period of the Universe, the is td and the time at which decaying turbulence be-
primeval plasma recombines to form neutral hydrogen, comes dominant is ti , and these are related as ti /td '
and the ionization fraction decreases and finally reaches 14.8(B0 /nG)−1 (kD /Mpc−1 )−1 , where B0 is the present
to 10−4 at redshift 100. But the residual free e− is still day magnetic field and kD is the damping scale (Chluba
sufficient to carry the current to sustain primordial mag- et al., 2015).
netic field that may have generated in the very early
Universe during inflation (see Turner & Widrow, 1988; 5.4 Cooling due to dark-matter baryon interaction
Ratra, 1992; Grasso & Rubinstein, 2001; Giovannini,
2004, for reviews). This magnetic field exert forces on As mentioned in the previous section, the excess radio
the e− -ion fluids which causes a relative drift velocity, background changes T γ , which in turn affects the 21-
and consequently, a frictional force arises between the cm signal. Similarly, it has been shown in a few recent
neutral and ionized components. This leads to the dis- studies that the interactions between the cold dark mat-
sipation of magnetic energy, termed as ambipolar dif- ter particles and baryons could help the IGM to cool
fusion mechanism, and can heat the IGM. On the other faster than the standard adiabatic cooling (Barkana,
hand, due to the recombination, the photon mean free 2018; Berlin et al., 2018; Muñoz & Loeb, 2018a; Liu
J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000)000: #### Page 9 of 22 ####

et al., 2019). The interaction could be Rutherford like 21-cm signal. Further, different processes mentioned
where interaction cross-section depends on the relative in the above sections dominate at separate regimes in
velocity, v, as, σ = σ0 (v/c)−4 (Barkana, 2018). The the evolution of 21-cm signal. For example, once the
milli-charged dark matter model is one such kind of in- star formation begins, the Ly-α photon flux generated
teraction model (Muñoz & Loeb, 2018a). In case of from the first generation of stars starts to couple the
Rutherford like interaction, the energy transfer rate to spin temperature to the gas kinetic temperature. Since,
baryons from dark-matter due to such interaction can the gas temperature is below the CMBR temperature,
be written as Muñoz et al. (2015), one expect the 21-cm signal in absorption. The shape
and strength of the absorption depends on the Ly-α cou-
dQb 2mb ρχ σ0 e−r /2 (T χ − T K )kB c4
2
pling strength. As soon as the Ly-α coupling saturates,
= √ the shape of the 21-cm signal is governed by the other
dt (mb + mχ )2 2πu3th
heating processes. Note that, the impact of these pro-
ρχ mχ mb D(Vχb ) cesses on the global signal is not sharply distinguished,
+ Vχb . (25)
ρm mχ + mb c2 hence there could be a overlap, and depends on the
various efficiency parameters associated with each pro-
Here, mχ , mb and ρχ , ρb are the masses and energy cesses.
densities of dark matter and baryon, respectively, and One such scenario has been shown in Fig. 1, where
u2th = kB (T b /mb + T χ /mχ ) is the variance of the ther- the coupling due to Ly-α photons and heating of IGM
mal relative velocity of dark-matter and baryons. The due to X-ray photons are considered (this plot is gen-
relative velocity between dark matter and baryon, (Vχb ) erated using the analytical code used in Nebrin et al.,
also evolves with redshift and can be given as, 2019). For this particular result, only the atomic cool-
ing halos with virial temperature, T vir = 104 K are con-
dVχb Vχb D(Vχb )
= + (26) sidered for star formation with the star formation effi-
dz 1 + z H(z)(1 + z) ciency of f∗ = 0.1, where f∗ is defined as the fraction
of baryons residing within the stars in a galaxy. Fur-
with,
ther, the X-ray efficiency is considered to be fX = 1,
ρm σ0 c4 1 which means that sources produce a total of fX ×3.156×
D(Vχb ) = F(Vχb /uth ). (27) 1048 erg energy per stellar mass in the X-ray band which
mb + mχ Vχb
2
we assume to span 0.1 − 10 keV. (see Eq. 20). The left
panel shows the variation in T K , T s , and T γ by black
The function F is given by, solid, magenta solid, and black dotted curves respec-
r tively, whereas in the right panel, the corresponding
r
2 −r2 /2 brightness temperature is shown by black solid curve.
F(r) = er f √ − re , (28)
2 π It is clear from Fig. 1, T s starts to decouple from T γ
at z ∼ 25, and finally couples with T K by z ∼ 17
with F(0) = 0 and F(∞) = 1. It can be seen from due to the presence of Ly-α coupling. This leads T s
Eq. 25 that the first term depends on the temperature to reach a minimum of ∼ 10 K, which produces an ab-
difference between two fluids. In case of the cold dark sorption depth of ∼ 150 mK (shown in the right panel).
matter scenario, the temperature of dark-matter is likely Then due to the X-ray heating, T K as well as T s cross
to be lower than the IGM, and hence this term helps to the CMBR temperature at z ∼ 13. Hence, the pres-
cool the baryon fluids. The second term arises due to ence of Ly-α coupling along with X-ray heating can
the friction between dark matter and baryon fluids as successfully produce 21-cm absorption profile of depth
they have different velocities, and hence, both the fluids 100 − 200 mK which is generally required in a standard
get heated up irrespective of their own temperature and cosmological model.
depending on their relative velocity, Vχb . However, this However, there is a possible detection of the global
term is subdominant during the cosmic dawn, and as a HI 21-cm absorption signal by the Experiment to De-
result of which the IGM temperature decreases due to tect the Epoch of Reionization Signature (EDGES)
this Rutherford like interaction. which shows that the detected signal has an absorption
depth of 0.5+0.5
−0.2 K centred at frequency 78 ± 1 MHz or
redshift z ∼ 17 as can be seen from Fig. 2 (Bowman
6. Global signal et al., 2018b). Note that, there are concerns regard-
ing the foreground removal and unaccounted systemat-
We have already described current theoretical under- ics that could lead to the misinterpretation of the signal
standing of cosmic dawn along with the various physi- (see Hills et al., 2018; Bradley et al., 2019; Singh &
cal processes which play important roles in shaping the
#### Page 10 of 22 J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: ####

104 50
TK
TS
Tγ
103 0
Temperature (K)

δTb (mK)
10
2 -50

1 -100
10

0 -150
10
10 15 20 25 30 35 10 15 20 25 30 35
Redshift (z) Redshift (z)

Figure 1. Left panel: The evolution of T γ , T s , T K with redshift is shown. In this scenario, Ly-α coupling and X-ray heating
are considered. The source model considered here has a parameter set of f∗ = 0.1, fX = 1, T vir = 104 K. Right panel: The
corresponding global 21-cm signal is shown for the same set of parameters.

and baryon that we have discussed in Sec. 5.4. Note

200 that, such kind of interaction cools the IGM, hence
it decides the depth of the absorption signal. How-
ever, the width of the absorption signal depends on the
0 heating mechanisms those are effective during cosmic
dawn. One such scenario of dark-matter baryon inter-
200 action along with the magnetic field heating is consid-
Tb(mK)

ered in Bera et al. (2020), and their results are shown in

Fig. 3. This plot shows the variation in gas temperature
400 and the impact on the ionization fraction for different
H1
H2 parameters shown in the legend.
H3
600 H4 The upper panel of Fig. 3 shows that the primordial
H5
H6 magnetic field and DM-baryonic interaction together
P8
introduces a ‘plateau like feature’ in the redshift evolu-
26 24 22 20 18 16 14
redshift (z) tion of the IGM temperature. The plateau like feature is
more prominent for a set of parameters mχ = 0.01 GeV,
Figure 2. EDGES observation of the global 21 cm signal. σ45 = 50 and B0 = 0.25 nG. In this case, the cool-
The different hardware configuration that were used for the ing rate due to the DM-baryonic interaction and heating
observations are denoted by H1, H2, H3, ....P8. Note the rate due to the primordial magnetic field compensates
−500 mK absorption trough (around z ∼ 17) which is twice each other for a certain redshift range, but at lower red-
that of the prediction coming from standard galaxy formation shifts the heating due to the primordial magnetic field
model. The data, used here for plotting, is publicly available becomes ineffective due to the decaying of magnetic
at [Link] field. The middle of Fig. 3 shows the residual elec-
tron fraction, xe as a function of redshift respectively.
As discussed in the previous cases, the residual elec-
Subrahmanyan, 2019; Sims & Pober, 2020, for deailed tron fraction xe gets suppressed when both the DM-
description). A lot of efforts which are fundamentally baryonic interactions and primordial magnetic field are
different have been put up in order to understand this active. The EDGES absorption spectra show that the
globally averaged signal detected by EDGES (Barkana, IGM temperature is rising at redshifts z . 17. How-
2018; Berlin et al., 2018; Muñoz & Loeb, 2018a; Liu ever, from the figure, it is clear that the magnetic field
et al., 2019; Feng & Holder, 2018b; Ewall-Wice et al., can heat the IGM significantly but heating is not much
2018; Fialkov & Barkana, 2019). One such possible efficient at low redshift, hence can not explain the heat-
explanation is the interaction between cold dark-matter ing part of the EDGES absorption profile (for details
J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000)000: #### Page 11 of 22 ####

Ly-α photons and properties of first stars. The other two

parameters, mχ , and σ45 represent the dark-matter mass
and interaction cross-section, σ45 = σ0 /(10−45 m−2 ).
These parameters are explored more elaborately in Bera
et al. (2022). It can be seen from Fig. 4, that the gas
kinetic temperature T K and CMBR temperature T γ are
coupled to each other upto redshift z & 200 through
Compton scattering process. Afterwards, the presence
of dark-matter baryon interaction along with adiabatic
cooling results in sharp fall of T K . Due to collisional
coupling, T s follows T K upto z ∼ 100. As soon as
the collisional coupling becomes weak due to the lower
IGM temperature and density, T s starts to follow T γ .
As discussed before, T s again decoupled from T γ due
to the presence of Ly-α photons around z ∼ 30. As
the contribution of Ly-α photons from Pop III stars are
also considered in this model, it helps to initiate the
coupling of T s to T K at an earlier redshift. Afterwards,
T K as well as T S reach a minimum at z ∼ 20. The
cosmic rays protons generated from the first genera-
Figure 3. The upper and middle panels show the IGM tion of stars are enough to heat the ambient gas, and
kinetic temperature T K and residual free electron fraction finally T s and T K cross the CMBR temperature at red-
xe as a function of redshift in presence of the primordial
shift z ∼ 12. In the R.H.S plot, the corresponding 21-
magnetic field and dark-matter baryon interaction. The solid
cm absorption signal is plotted by the blue solid curve.
grey line in the top panel shows the CMBR temperature,
The red shaded region is achieved by varying the ef-
T γ . The lower panel shows the normalised magnetic field
B(z), and we refer the reader to Bera et al. (2020) for more
ficiencies of cosmic rays generated from Pop III and
details. The figure is adopted with permission from Bera Pop II stars. It is clear that the entire range of the ab-
et al. (2020). sorption depth reported by EDGES can be described by
the Ly-α coupling along with cosmic rays heating. The
best-fit profile of EDGES is also plotted by black trian-
see Bera et al., 2020). Note that, the magnitude of gles for reference. The heating due to cosmic rays help
magnetic field, and the dark-matter baryon interaction the absorption signal to rise sharply which can be seen
parameters can be constrained using the global 21-cm Fig. 4. It is clear from this figure that cosmic ray is a
signal as discussed in Minoda et al. (2019) and Bera potential source of heating for a steeper absorption.
et al. (2020). Further in the lower panel of Fig. 3, nor- Note that, Fig. 4 is shown for a set of parameters
malised magnetic field, B(z) is plotted for the same set that quantifies the amount of Ly-α flux input and heat-
of parameters. The details can be found in Bera et al. ing due to cosmic rays. Hence, the evolution of 21-cm
(2020). absorption signal could vary depending on the param-
As already mentioned, another possible source of eters related to the various physical processes consid-
heating could be cosmic rays which was considered ered in different models. Further, the detection of 21-
in Bera et al. (2022). The result of such model is cm signal may provide constraint on the early sources
shown in Fig. 4 where, along with the Ly-α coupling, and their subsequent feedbacks.
only the heating by cosmic ray particles are consid- People have also studied another heating process
ered in presence of dark-matter baryon interaction, and such as heating due to Ly-α photons (Chen & Miralda-
no X-ray heating is considered. In the L.H.S plot of Escudé, 2004; Furlanetto & Pritchard, 2006; Ghara
Fig. 4, CMBR temperature, gas temperature and spin & Mellema, 2020; Mittal & Kulkarni, 2021). One
temperature are plotted by black dotted, blue solid such mechanism during cosmic dawn is shown in
and green dashed curves respectively for a parame- Fig. 5, where they used a parameter fα which varies
ter set of (q, III , II , fα,III , fα,II , mχ /GeV, σ45 ) = the strength of the Ly-α radiation (Mittal & Kulkarni,
(2.2, 0.05, 0.16, 0.1, 1, 0.1, 2). Here, q, III , and II de- 2021). As a result, the heating of the IGM due to Ly-
note spectral index of cosmic ray spectra, efficiency of α photons gets affected significantly (shown in the left
cosmic rays generated in Pop III and Pop II stars re- panel), and in turn the depth and duration of differen-
spectively. Further, fα is the normalization parameter tial brightness temperature changes (shown in the right
which takes care of the uncertainty in the escape of the panel). It is clear form Fig. 5 that a strong Ly-α back-
#### Page 12 of 22 J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: ####

Figure 4. Left panel: The CMBR temperature T γ (black dotted), gas temperature T K (blue solid curve), and spin temperature
T s (green dashed curve) are plotted in presence of dark-matter baryon interaction of (mχ /GeV, σ45 ) = (0.1, 2). Right panel:
The corresponding global 21-cm absorption profile is shown by blue solid curve. By varying the model parameters, other
21-cm profiles can be obtained those are within the upper and lower bounds of the absorption depth reported by EDGES, as
shown by the red shaded region. The best fit 21-cm profile of EDGES is also plotted by black triangles for reference.

103
0

102 −100
∆Tb(mK)

−200
TK(K)

101
EDGES
GM19
−300
fα = 102
fα = 10
100
fα = 1
−400 fα = 10−1
fα = 10−2
Tγ fα = 0
10−1 −500
14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
z z

Figure 5. Left panel: The evolution of T K with redshift are shown for different fα shown in the legend. Here, fα is the scaling
factor that controls the coupling and heating due to Ly-α photons, and the detail can be found in Mittal & Kulkarni (2021).
Right panel: The corresponding differential brightness temperatures are shown. The grey dashed line denotes the EDGES
detection. The figure is adopted with permission from Mittal & Kulkarni (2021)
J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000)000: #### Page 13 of 22 ####

ground is required, though not sufficient, in order to fit For example, the redshift evolution of the large-scale
with the EDGES observed signal. One can explore the power spectrum is expected to show a ‘three-peak’ fea-
efficiency of heating due to different processes such as ture where the peaks from high redshift to low red-
CRs, X-rays, Ly-α, or any other heating processes. shift are due to fluctuations in Ly-α coupling, X-ray
It is worth mentioning that a recent observation by heating and ionization (see Fig. 6) (Baek et al., 2010;
Shaped Antenna measurement of the background RA- Ghara et al., 2015a). This sensitive nature of the power
dio Spectrum (SARAS 3) (Singh et al., 2021) claims spectrum due to change in source model provides the
a null detection of the global 21-cm absorption signal opportunity to tightly constrain the properties of these
and they rule out the EDGES detection with 93.5 % early sources (such as high-mass X-ray binaries, mini-
confidence . As they used a completely different experi- quasars) using the interferometric observations of cos-
mental setup and highlighted that the deeper absorption mic dawn 21-cm signal.
profile of EDGES may not be of astrophysical origin, Besides heating, processes that might cool the IGM
one needs to wait for other experiments to settle this is- gas other than the cosmological expansion of the Uni-
sue. However, other aspect of 21-cm signal namely the verse also play important roles in shaping the cosmic
power spectrum can be a complementary probe of the dawn 21-cm power spectrum (Fialkov et al., 2018;
HI distribution during cosmic dawn that SKA is aim- Muñoz & Loeb, 2018b; Berlin et al., 2018), like in
ing to probe. We discuss this aspect in the following case of global 21-cm signal discussed in Sec. 6.. In
section. addition, the presence of an excess radio background to
the CMB in the form of both the uniform and fluctu-
ating can also significantly alter the cosmic dawn 21-
7. Power spectrum cm power spectrum (Reis et al., 2020; Mondal et al.,
2020; Ghara et al., 2021b). Further, the HI 21-cm sig-
It is expected that the IGM kinetic temperature takes nal also depends on the nature of dark matter particles
over the background CMBR temperature (i.e., T S >> (Sitwell et al., 2014; Nebrin et al., 2019). In princi-
T γ ) during the EoR and, thus, the spatial fluctuations ple, one should consider all possible mechanisms that
in the signal during EoR are mainly determined by have non-negligible contributions while modelling the
the fluctuations in the neutral hydrogen density. On cosmic dawn 21-cm signal. However, it is not straight-
the contrary, the ionization remains low during cosmic forward to separate out the relative contribution of a
dawn and fluctuations in the spin temperature distribu- process using 21-cm measurements unless its impact
tion is expected to dominate the HI power spectrum on the signal is unique.
during cosmic dawn given that the radio background In addition to the T γ and T S dependencies, the cos-
remains uniform. It should be realized that mecha- mic dawn power spectrum also crucially depends on
nisms that have significant impacts on the amplitude the different line of sight effects such as the redshift
and spatial structures of T γ and T S are important for the space distortion (RSD), light-cone effect. Studies such
study of the 21-cm signal power spectrum during cos- as Bharadwaj & Ali (2004); Mao et al. (2012); Jensen
mic dawn. In section 4. & 5., we discussed processes et al. (2013); Majumdar et al. (2013) show that RSD
that have significant impact on the spin temperature and can boost the power spectrum of cosmic dawn by a fac-
HI 21-cm signal from cosmic dawn. tor of ≈ 2 when fluctuations can be assumed linear. The
Theoretical studies such as Islam et al. (2019); Ross spin temperature fluctuations during the cosmic dawn
et al. (2019); Ghara et al. (2016) show that the mea- suppresses the impact of RSD on the power spectrum
sured visibilities and 21-cm power spectrum are very (see e.g., Ghara et al., 2015a; Ross et al., 2021). Fur-
sensitive to the radiation backgrounds that majorly de- ther, it has been shown that the light-cone effect can
pend on the underlying astrophysical sources. For ex- have significant impact on the large HI power power
ample, at the same global averaged ionization states of spectrum during initial and late stages of reionization
the Universe, the power spectrum of the 21-cm signal (see e.g., Datta et al., 2012b, 2014), while the effect
brightness temperature would be distinctly different be- can enhance (suppress) the large-scale power spectrum
tween two scenarios. Such scenarios are shown in the by up to a factor of ∼ 3 (0.6) at different stages of cos-
middle and bottom panels of Fig. 6 where one is driven mic dawn for a non-uniform spin temperature (see e.g.,
by high-mass X-ray binaries (dashed curves) and the Ghara et al., 2015b).
second one is driven by a power-law X-ray sources such
as mini-quasars (solid curves). In particular, the large- 7.1 Current upper limits on HI power spectrum
scale power spectrum which has a higher detectability
The ongoing radio interferometric experiments that aim
in a radio interferometric observation is more sensitive
to detect this faint signal from the cosmic dawn and
to the radiation backgrounds such as UV, X-rays, Ly-α.
EoR have, to date, only provided upper limits on the
#### Page 14 of 22 J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: ####

power spectrum. The first upper limit on the dimen-

Power−law sionless power spectrum of the signal at redshift 8.6
Composite
was obtained by GMRT which reach a 2σ value of
0
∆2 (k) < (248)2 mK2 for a k-scale 0.5 h Mpc−1 (Paciga
<δTb> (mK)

et al., 2013). A recent study using the GMRT obtains

a 2σ upper limit of ∼ (73)2 K2 on ∆2 (k) at a much
−50 smaller scale at k = 1.59 Mpc−1 (Pal et al., 2021).
The best upper limit on the power spectrum for k-scale
0.37 h Mpc−1 at redshift 8.37 as obtained by PAPER in-
terferometer is (200mK)2 (Kolopanis et al., 2019). On
−100
the other hand, the best upper limit from LOFAR inter-
ferometer is at k-scale 0.075 h Mpc−1 with 2σ value of
6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 (73)2 mK2 at redshifts 9.1 (Mertens et al., 2020). The
z best upper limit obtained by MWA interferometer is at
redshift 6.5 with a 2σ value ∆2 (k = 0.14 h Mpc−1 ) ≈
k=0.1 Mpc−1
(43)2 mK2 . Recently, HERA interferometer published
2σ upper limits of (30.76)2 mK2 at k = 0.192 h Mpc−1
at z = 7.9 (Abdurashidova et al., 2022a) which is the
∆ (mK )
2

101 best upper limit so far. Note that, these are not the
complete set of upper limits. These experiments also
2

produced upper limits at other redshifts which includes

redshift as large as z ∼ 20 − 25 and post reionization
epochs (Barry et al., 2019; Patil et al., 2017; Gehlot
et al., 2019, 2020; Eastwood et al., 2019; Chakraborty
100 et al., 2019).
6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
z
xHII=0.01 8. Parameter estimation
0.1
0.5 Accurately measured HI 21-cm signal can put con-
straint on various astrophysical parameters related to
∆ (mK )
2

the physics that determines the 21-cm signal along with

the cosmological parameters. Recently a huge body
of work (Mesinger et al., 2016; Greig & Mesinger,
2

101 2017; Hassan et al., 2017; Kern et al., 2017; Greig &
Mesinger, 2018; Schmit & Pritchard, 2018; Park et al.,
2019; Ghara et al., 2021a; Choudhury et al., 2021) is
being carried out to develop parameter estimation tech-
0.1 1 niques using 21 cm signal (both global and fluctuation)
−1 and reionization related observations. These parameter
k (Mpc ) estimation techniques can broadly be classified into two
categories - one is based on Bayesian method and an-
Figure 6. Top Panel: Redshift evolution of the volume other is based on machine learning techniques. Before
averaged brightness temperature of the 21-cm signal; for the discovery of EDGES signal, Liu & Parsons (2016)
two different source models, dashed curve presents the have used a combination of mock 21 cm power spec-
composite spectrum derived from the observation with trum, a mock global 21 cm signal (in the redshift range
MAXI telescope while the solid curve corresponds to power- z ∼ 10 − 14) and Planck observations found a much
law spectrum with a spectral index of 1.5. Middle Panel:
stringent constraints on cosmological and astrophysi-
Redshift evolution of the large-scale power spectrum of the
cal parameters compared to Planck constraints. More
21-cm signal; The curves correspond to scale 0.1 Mpc−1
recently, Chatterjee et al. (2021) with the help of an
. Bottom panel: The power spectrum of 21-cm signal as
a function of scale at different stages of reionization for
advanced MCMC based pipeline, CosmoReionMC, has
the two different source models; dashed curves present the used Planck measurements and QSO related observa-
composite spectrum, while the thick curves correspond tions along with the EDGES signal to put constraints
to the power-law spectrum. The figure is adopted with jointly on the cosmological and astrophysical param-
permission from Islam et al. (2019).
J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000)000: #### Page 15 of 22 ####

50 50
Mini−QSO
0
0
−50
δTb (mK)

δTb (mK)
−100 −50

Lyα deficient
−150 −100

Absorption
HII region

Emission
−200
Galaxy −150
−250 Mini−QSO
HMXBs
−300 −200
100 101 102 100 101 102
R (cMpc) R (cMpc)

Figure 7. Left Panel: The radial brightness temperature pattern as a function of the radial distance R from the centre of the
model sources. Different lines represent different types of source models where we keep the stellar mass of the source fixed
to 107 M . Right panel: Four separate regions around a mini-QSO type source. The plot is adopted with permission from
Ghara et al. (2017).

eters by simultaneously varying all the free parame- of EoR and cosmic dawn. For example, using the recent
ters. Their finding suggests that when EDGES sig- results from HERA which appeared in Abdurashidova
nal is used along with the QSO related observations et al. (2022a), the team showed that the IGM temper-
such as photoionization rate, the redshift distribution ature must be larger than the adiabatic cooling thresh-
of Lyman limit system and neutral hydrogen fraction at old by redshift 8 while the soft band X-ray luminosi-
z ∼ 5−6, the introduction of early Pop III stars becomes ties per star formation rate of the first galaxies are
unavoidable. They also find that if the EDGES signal constrained (1σ level) to [1040.2 , 1041.9 ] erg/s/(M /yr)
is replaced by a mock 21 cm signal generated from (Abdurashidova et al., 2022c). Besides constraining
a standard galaxy formation code, the constraints on the properties of the early astrophysical sources and
the cosmological parameters become much more strin- processes that have a significant impact on the 21-cm
gent compared to the earlier constraints coming from signal through heating/cooling of the IGM gas or by
only Planck observations (Planck Collaboration et al., changing the radio background, one can also study the
2020). On the other hand, Choudhury et al. (2021) had properties of the IGM. Recent studies such as Ghara
developed a artificial neural network based technique et al. (2020); Greig et al. (2021b); Ghara et al. (2021a)
to extract astrophysical parameters from EDGES obser- used the results from LOFAR, MWA, and aimed to con-
vation whereas Gillet et al. (2019), used a convolution strain the ionization and thermal states of the IGM in
neural network based pipeline to extract the astrophys- terms of quantities such as the average ionization frac-
ical parameters directly from 21-cm images. tion, average gas temperature, averaged brightness tem-
Besides the global signal, the power spectrum mea- perature, the volume fraction of the ‘heated regions’
surements have also been used to constrain the cosmic IGM with temperature larger than T CMB , characteristic
dawn and EoR. While these upper limits are becoming size of these hearts regions, etc.
stronger with the improvement of data analysis tech- One should realize that, although the power spec-
niques and adding more observation hours, they are trum is very useful for characterising the spatial fluc-
still at least one order larger than the expected large- tuations of the desired signal, it is not able to provide
scale 21-cm power spectrum. Most of the upper lim- all spatial information hidden in the signal, as the 21-
its on the signal power spectrum obtained from differ- cm signal during cosmic dawn and EoR is expected to
ent radio interferometric observations are unable to rule be highly non-gaussian. Thus, we need higher-order
out cosmic dawn and EoR scenarios which do not re- statistics such as bispectrum (see e.g., Majumdar et al.,
quire either an unconventional cooling mechanism or 2018; Giri et al., 2019; Kamran et al., 2021a,b) to re-
the presence of strong additional radio background to veal such missing information which the power spec-
the CMB. Especially, these upper limits become weaker trum does not encode.
at a higher redshift. Nevertheless, recent results from
LOFAR, MWA, HERA started to rule out some models
#### Page 16 of 22 J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: ####

4. Ly-α deficient region: The Ly-α coupling be-

comes inefficient at region far away from the
source centre. In this far away region T s = T γ
and thus the HI 21-cm signal vanishes there.
Length scales of these distinct regions depend on the
properties of the source. It is clear from the figure
(see left panel of Fig. 7) that the strength of the sig-
nal as well as the size of the emission region are much
weaker than the absorption region for typical early gen-
eration sources such as early galaxies, high mass X-
ray binaries (HMXBs). We see that the HI 21-cm sig-
nal profile around an isolated source is very simple.
However, in reality, one expects significant overlap be-
tween these individual 21 cm patterns as there will be
multiple sources in the IGM. Nevertheless, one might
expect isolated absorption regions around clusters of
sources at the initial stages of the cosmic dawn when
Figure 8. A brightness temperature slice at redshift z ≈ 9.1 the Ly-α coupling yet to become saturated. This era
with ionization fraction 0.01. The 21-cm signal is dominated
is expected to be followed by an epoch of IGM heat-
by spin temperature fluctuations. For more details of the
ing. Ly-α coupling in this era is expected to be strong.
source model used to generate this map, we refer the reader
Fig. 8 shows a simulated 2D differential brightness tem-
to Ghara et al. (2020), and this figure is adopted with their
permission.
perature map of such an epoch where large emission
regions (in yellow) are embedded in absorption back-
ground (in green) (see Fig. 8). At the end of this heat-
9. HI 21-cm images during cosmic dawn ing era, the IGM kinetic and spin temperature are ex-
pected to become higher than the CMBR temperature
In general, one can expect four distinct features around i.e., T s ≈ T k >> T γ . One also expects ionized regions
a source during the cosmic dawn ( e.g., see the right of different sizes grow with time and get overlapped
panel of Fig. 7). These separate regions, from the cen- with each other during this era.
tre, are: Fig. 6 shows large scale HI 21-cm power spectrum
as a function of redshift. We see that there are three
1. HII/ionized region: UV photons from the source ‘peaks’ appearing from higher to lower redshifts cor-
ionize the medium just adjacent to the centre. responding to fluctuations in the Ly-α coupling, X-ray
Consequently, both the HI fraction xHI and the heating and ionization field respectively. Here we note
21-cm signal become zero in that region. that there might be the scenarios where there could be
2. Emission region: X-rays/cosmic rays etc. from overlap between Ly-α coupling, heating and ionization
the source penetrate longer distance than the UV processes, and these three distinct peak feature may not
photons due to their longer mean free path and arise there.
heat the gas in the IGM. This creates a region out- Detection of the cosmological HI 21-cm signal is
side the central HII region where the IGM kinetic quite challenging as it is very weak compared to the
temperature T K ≈ T S > T γ . As a result the HI astrophysical foregrounds and the system noise. Due
differential brightness temperature δT b becomes to limited sensitivity, the existing radio interferometers
positive i.e., the 21-cm signal is seen in emission (e.g., uGMRT, LOFAR, MWA etc. ) mainly aim to
in that region. measure the signal statistically using power spectrum,
Bi-spectrum etc. However, it has been proposed and
3. Absorption region: Small amount of Ly-α pho- studied in detail (Datta et al., 2007, 2008; Majumdar
tons is enough to couple the HI spin temperature et al., 2011; Datta et al., 2012a) that a matched fil-
T s with the IGM kinetic temperature T k . There- ter based technique can be sued to detect individual
fore, the above emission region is likely to be fol- HI/HII regions using ongoing /upcoming experiments.
lowed by a region where the Lyman-α coupling Some of the ongoing interferometric experiments can
is strong but the X-ray/cosmic ray heating is not also produce low-resolution images of the EoR and cos-
efficient. This makes T s < T γ and δT b negative in mic dawn 21-cm signal (see e.g., Zaroubi et al., 2012).
that region i.e., the HI 21-cm signal will be seen On the contrary, the upcoming Square Kilometre Ar-
in absorption. ray (SKA) will have adequate sensitivity to produce
J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000)000: #### Page 17 of 22 ####

actual tomographic images of the HI signal with good one at higher redshift corresponds to the situation when
enough resolutions (Mellema et al., 2015; Ghara et al., the spin temperature becomes fully coupled to the IGM
2017). Motivated by the above prospect, several theo- temperature. The dip at lower redshift arises when IGM
retical studies have started proposing methods for ex- temperature is much higher than the CMBR tempera-
tracting information about the cosmic dawn and EoR ture but ionization is at initial stage.
using tomographic analysis of HI images. Currently, We see from the above discussion that information
it is not possible to do pixel to pixel comparison be- contained in the global signal and power spectrum can
tween an observed tomographic image and a model im- be treated as complimentary to each other in a sense
age of the 21-cm signal. Thus, these studies try to sta- that the global signal is maximum when the power
tistically characterise the topology of the images. The spectrum is minimum and vice versa. Therefore, a joint
use of Minkowski functionals (e.g., Bag et al., 2018, analysis of these two signals would be very useful for
2019; Kapahtia et al., 2021), Euler characteristic (see understanding the cosmic dawn much better. A thor-
e.g., Giri & Mellema, 2021), Fractal dimensions (e.g., ough analysis is required towards this. Here we note
Bandyopadhyay et al., 2017), Bubble size distributions that there is a separate article which reviews synergies
(Giri et al., 2018; Ghara & Choudhury, 2020), Indi- between cosmological 21-cm signal and various line in-
vidual images using convolutional neural network (e.g., tensity maps in order to probe the EoR (Murmu et al.,
Gillet et al., 2019) are some such approaches. 2022).

10. Observations with SKA and synergies with 11. Summary

global signal
Observations of the cosmological HI 21-cm signal us-
Measurements of the global signal and statistical quan- ing the Square Kilometer array (SKA) are expected to
tities such as the power spectra/Bi-spectra of redshifted revolutionize our understanding about the early Uni-
HI 21-cm radiation are two major observational strate- verse, particularly, the period when the first lumi-
gies for probing the cosmic dawn and reionization era. nous sources appeared in the Universe. Here, we re-
Highly sensitive experiments such as the SKA and view recent theoretical developments regarding the red-
HERA should also be able to detect images of HI 21- shifted HI 21-cm signal from cosmic dawn, prospects
cm fields. HI 21-cm signal measured using different of constraining first luminous sources and inter-galactic
strategies encodes signatures of the same underlying medium using ongoing and upcoming experiments. A
sources, inter-galactic medium and physical processes. companion review article (Shaw et al., 2022) focuses
Therefore, a joint analysis of these signals is expected on the HI 21-cm signal from the epoch of reionization
to constrain models of cosmic dawn much better. and various observational challenges for detecting the
In particular, the global HI 21-cm signal carries signal.
information about the redshift evolution of various We begin with a short description of basics of cos-
radiation fields such as Ly-α, X-rays, UV, Lyman- mological HI 21-cm signal with emphasis on two main
Werner, radio and physical processes such as IGM observable quantities i.e., the global HI 21-cm signal
heating due to X-rays/cosmic rays/magnetic fields and and the power spectrum of HI brightness temperature
Wouthuysen-Field coupling etc. The global signal is fluctuations. The first generation of luminous sources
the strongest at higher redshift when the Ly-α cou- play an important role in shaping both the global sig-
pling is saturated and the IGM heating is not so sig- nal and power spectrum. Therefore, we present a dis-
nificant (refer to the top panel of Fig. 6) (Pritchard cussion on the possible first sources such as Pop III,
& Loeb, 2012). It also peaks at lower redshift when Pop II stars, galaxies, mini-quasars that are likely to in-
the IGM heating is substantial and spin temperature is fluence the HI 21-cm signal during the cosmic dawn.
much higher than the CMBR temperature (Fig. 6). On Subsequently, radiation background produced by these
the other hand, the HI 21-cm power spectrum peaks at sources at different wavebands such as the X-ray, Ly-
three different stages corresponding to maximum fluc- α, Lyman-Werner, (excess) radio radiation during the
tuations due to Ly-α coupling, IGM heating and ioniza- cosmic dawn are discussed. In particular, we focus
tion during the cosmic dawn and reionization era (Baek on the redshift evolution of these radiation background
et al., 2010; Ghara et al., 2015a). It is observed that and subsequent feedback effects on the source forma-
the power spectra peak when the coupling, heating and tion. Additionally, we discuss production of cosmic
ionization are roughly at half-way respectively (refer to rays from Pop III and Pop II sources and their impact
the middle panel of Fig. 6). It is also seen that there on the thermal state of the IGM during cosmic dawn.
are two dips in the power spectrum-redshift plot. The We, then, highlight various physical processes such
#### Page 18 of 22 J. Astrophys. Astr. (0000) 000: ####

as the coupling of the spin temperature with the IGM Abe, K. T., & Tashiro, H. 2021, PHYS REV D, 103,
kinetic temperature through the Wouthuysen-Field ef- 123543
fects, heating of the IGM and increase of background
temperature corresponding to radio radiation that are Abel, T., Bryan, G. L., & Norman, M. L. 2002, Science,
very important. Several mechanisms of IGM heat- 295, 93
ing/cooling by soft X-rays from stars, mini-quasars, Ali, S. S., Bharadwaj, S., & Chengalur, J. N. 2008, MN-
the primordial magnetic field, cosmic rays, dark mat- RAS, 385, 2166
ter baryonic interaction have been discussed . Impacts
of all these on the redshift evolution of the spin and Baek, S., Semelin, B., Di Matteo, P., Revaz, Y., &
IGM temperature have also been discussed. Finally, we Combes, F. 2010, A & A, 523, A4
discuss their impacts on the global HI 21-cm signal.
Other major topics considered in this review are the Bag, S., Mondal, R., Sarkar, P., et al. 2019, MNRAS,
HI 21-cm power spectrum and prospects of imaging the 485, 2235
HI 21-cm field using the SKA. Here, we mostly fo-
cus on results from numerical simulations and discuss Bag, S., Mondal, R., Sarkar, P., Bharadwaj, S., &
unique features in the redshift evolution of large scale Sahni, V. 2018, MNRAS, 477, 1984
HI 21-cm power spectrum. We put a special empha- Bandyopadhyay, B., Choudhury, T. R., & Seshadri,
sis on the ‘three peak’ nature of the HI power spectrum T. R. 2017, MNRAS, 466, 2302
when plotted against redshift.
Further, we summarize works which study con- Barkana, R. 2018, Nature, 555, 71
straints on the models of HI 21-cm signal during cosmic
dawn and reionization using existing measurements of Barkana, R., & Loeb, A. 2001, Physics Reports, 349,
the global 21-cm signal and upper limits on the power 125
spectrum obtained from ongoing interferometers such
Barkana, R., & Loeb, A. 2005, The Astrophysical Jour-
as the GMRT, MWA, HERA, LOFAR. Finally, we dis-
nal, 626, 1
cuss possibilities of constraining the cosmic dawn us-
ing a joint analysis of the global HI 21-cm signal and Barry, N., Wilensky, M., Trott, C. M., et al. 2019, Ap.J,
power spectrum measured by interoferometric experi- 884, 1
ments such the SKA.
Beardsley, A. P., Hazelton, B. J., Sullivan, I. S., et al.
2016, Ap.J, 833, 102
Acknowledgements
Bell, A. R. 1978, MNRAS, 182, 147
AB acknowledges financial support from UGC, Govt. Benson, A. J. 2012, NEW ASTRON, 17, 175
of India. SS and KKD acknowledge financial sup-
port from BRNS through a project grant (sanction no: Bera, A., Datta, K. K., & Samui, S. 2020, MNRAS,
57/14/10/2019-BRNS). SS thanks Presidency Univer- 498, 918
sity for the support through FRPDF grant. RG ac-
knowledges support by the Israel Science Foundation Bera, A., Samui, S., & Datta, K. K. 2022, arXiv e-
(grant no. 255/18). AC acknowledge support of the De- prints, arXiv:2202.12308
partment of Atomic Energy, Government of India, un-
Berlin, A., Hooper, D., Krnjaic, G., & McDermott,
der project no. 12-R&D-TFR-5.02-0700. KKD also ac-
S. D. 2018, Phys. Rev. Lett., 121, 011102
knowledges financial support from SERB-DST (Govt.
of India) through a project under MATRICS scheme Bharadwaj, S., & Ali, S. S. 2004, MNRAS, 352, 142
(MTR/2021/000384).
—. 2005, MNRAS, 356, 1519
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