Probing primordial 3He from hyperfine line afterglows around supercritical black holes

Vasiliev, E. O.; Sethi, Shiv K.; Shchekinov, Yu. A.

doi:10.1093/mnras/stz2964

“…Finally, as the radiation from local sources is expected to dominate over the background radiation, in particular at the higher redshifts before a strong background had time to build up (see e.g. Ciardi et al 2000), the best (possibly only) locations where the signal could be detected would be in the vicinity of the sources, in particular BHs (see also Vasiliev et al 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although a proper assessment of the coupling strength requires a detailed HeII Lyα radiative transfer, our approximate approach in Appendix A indicates that the HeII Lyα background produced in the cosmic reionization simulations is at least an order of magnitude below the one required for a full coupling through scattering. This suggests that, unless additional sources contributing to the background (such as a binary component in the stellar spectrum, a more abundant population of BHs at high redshift, the Lyα flux from excitation by X-ray photons) are included, an efficient coupling could be expected only in very high density pockets of gas through collisions, or in the vicinity of strong sources such as BHs (see also Vasiliev et al 2019), where the local radiation dominates over the background (see e.g. Ciardi et al 2000).…”

Section: Detectabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among these, the LOw Frequency ARray 1 (LOFAR), the Murchison Widefield Array 2 (MWA), the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array 3 (HERA), the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization 4 (PAPER) and the upcoming Square Kilometer Array 5 (SKA). While efforts to probe the high-z IGM have focused extensively on the 21 cm line, the hyperfine transition of 3 He + at 8.66 GHz (3.5 cm) also offers a unique insight into some astrophysical phenomena prevalent in the early universe (Furlanetto et al 2006;Bagla & Loeb 2009;McQuinn & Switzer 2009;Takeuchi et al 2014;Vasiliev et al 2019). In addition to being a probe of the high-z evolution of the helium component of gas, Bagla & Loeb (2009) suggested that this feature could also in principle be used to obtain independent constraints on the 21 cm signal, because the evolution of both HII and HeII are driven by stellar type sources during the epoch of (hydrogen) reionization, and thus the 21 cm and 3.5 cm signals are expected to be anti-correlated at these redshifts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Probing the high-z IGM with the hyperfine transition of 3He+

Khullar

¹

,

Ma

²

,

Busch

³

et al. 2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Abstract The hyperfine transition of 3He+ at 3.5 cm has been thought as a probe of the high-z IGM since it offers a unique insight into the evolution of the helium component of the gas, as well as potentially give an independent constraint on the 21 cm signal from neutral hydrogen. In this paper, we use radiative transfer simulations of reionization driven by sources such as stars, X-ray binaries, accreting black holes and shock heated interstellar medium, and simulations of a high-z quasar to characterize the signal and analyze its prospects of detection. We find that the peak of the signal lies in the range ∼1 − 50 μK for both environments, but while around the quasar it is always in emission, in the case of cosmic reionization a brief period of absorption is expected. As the evolution of HeII is determined by stars, we find that it is not possible to distinguish reionization histories driven by more energetic sources. On the other hand, while a bright QSO produces a signal in 21 cm that is very similar to the one from a large collection of galaxies, its signature in 3.5 cm is very peculiar and could be a powerful probe to identify the presence of the QSO. We analyze the prospects of the signal’s detectability using SKA1-mid as our reference telescope. We find that the noise power spectrum dominates over the power spectrum of the signal, although a modest S/N ratio can be obtained when the wavenumber bin width and the survey volume are sufficiently large.

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“…While the abundance of 3 He is challenging to measure, there are several proposed approaches that may secure a measurement of the primordial 3 He abundance with future facilities. Akin to the detection of 3 He + 8.7 GHz in Galactic H II regions, it may be possible (but extremely challenging) to detect 3 He + emission around growing supermassive black holes at redshift z > 12 (Vasiliev et al 2019), provided that the quasar environment retains a primordial composition. Another possibility is to detect the 3 He + 8.7 GHz transition in absorption against the spectrum of a radio bright quasar during helium reionization (at redshift z ∼ 3; McQuinn & Switzer 2009;Takeuchi et al 2014;Khullar et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Primordial Helium-3 Redux: The Helium Isotope Ratio of the Orion Nebula*

Cooke

¹

,

Noterdaeme

²

,

Johnson

³

et al. 2022

ApJ

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We report the first direct measurement of the helium isotope ratio, 3He/4He, outside of the Local Interstellar Cloud, as part of science-verification observations with the upgraded CRyogenic InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph. Our determination of 3He/4He is based on metastable He i* absorption along the line of sight toward Θ2A Ori in the Orion Nebula. We measure a value 3He/4He = (1.77 ± 0.13) × 10−4, which is just ∼40% above the primordial relative abundance of these isotopes, assuming the Standard Model of particle physics and cosmology, (3He/4He)p = (1.257 ± 0.017) × 10−4. We calculate a suite of galactic chemical evolution simulations to study the Galactic build up of these isotopes, using the yields from Limongi & Chieffi for stars in the mass range M = 8–100 M ⊙ and Lagarde et al. for M = 0.8–8 M ⊙. We find that these simulations simultaneously reproduce the Orion and protosolar 3He/4He values if the calculations are initialized with a primordial ratio 3 He / 4 He p = ( 1.043 ± 0.089 ) × 10 − 4 . Even though the quoted error does not include the model uncertainty, this determination agrees with the Standard Model value to within ∼2σ. We also use the present-day Galactic abundance of deuterium (D/H), helium (He/H), and 3He/4He to infer an empirical limit on the primordial 3He abundance, 3 He / H p ≤ ( 1.09 ± 0.18 ) × 10 − 5 , which also agrees with the Standard Model value. We point out that it is becoming increasingly difficult to explain the discrepant primordial 7Li/H abundance with nonstandard physics, without breaking the remarkable simultaneous agreement of three primordial element ratios (D/H, 4He/H, and 3He/4He) with the Standard Model values.

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“…Galactic H ii regions, it may be possible (but extremely challenging) to detect 3 He + emission around growing supermassive black holes at redshift z > 12 (Vasiliev et al 2019), provided that the quasar environment retains a primordial composition. Another possibility is to detect the 3 He + 8.7 GHz transition in absorption against the spectrum of a radio bright quasar during helium reionization (at redshift z ∼ 3; McQuinn & Switzer 2009;Takeuchi et al 2014;Khullar et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Primordial helium-3 redux: The helium isotope ratio of the Orion nebula

Cooke,

Noterdaeme,

Johnson

et al. 2022

Preprint

0

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We report the first direct measurement of the helium isotope ratio, 3 He/ 4 He, outside of the Local Interstellar Cloud, as part of science verification observations with the upgraded CRyogenic InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph (CRIRES). Our determination of 3 He/ 4 He is based on metastable He i* absorption along the line-of-sight towards Θ 2 A Ori in the Orion Nebula. We measure a value 3 He/ 4 He = (1.77 ± 0.13) × 10 −4 , which is just ∼ 40 per cent above the primordial relative abundance of these isotopes, assuming the Standard Model of particle physics and cosmology, ( 3 He/ 4 He) p = (1.257 ± 0.017) × 10 −4 . We calculate a suite of galactic chemical evolution simulations to study the Galactic build up of these isotopes, using the yields from Limongi & Chieffi (2018) for stars in the mass range M = 8 − 100 M and Lagarde et al. (2011, 2012) for M = 0.8 − 8 M . We find that these simulations simultaneously reproduce the Orion and protosolar 3 He/ 4 He values if the calculations are initialized with a primordial ratio ( 3 He/ 4 He) p = (1.043 ± 0.089) × 10 −4 . Even though the quoted error does not include the model uncertainty, this determination agrees with the Standard Model value to within ∼ 2σ. We also use the present-day Galactic abundance of deuterium (D/H), helium (He/H), and 3 He/ 4 He to infer an empirical limit on the primordial 3 He abundance, ( 3 He/H) p ≤ (1.09 ± 0.18) × 10 −5 , which also agrees with the Standard Model value. We point out that it is becoming increasingly difficult to explain the discrepant primordial 7 Li/H abundance with non-standard physics, without breaking the remarkable simultaneous agreement of three primordial element ratios (D/H, 4 He/H, and 3 He/ 4 He) with the Standard Model values. * Based on observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO programme(s) 107. 22U1.001, 194.C-0833.

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Probing primordial 3He from hyperfine line afterglows around supercritical black holes

Cited by 3 publications

References 34 publications

Probing the high-z IGM with the hyperfine transition of 3He+

Probing the high-z IGM with the hyperfine transition of 3He+

Primordial Helium-3 Redux: The Helium Isotope Ratio of the Orion Nebula*

Primordial helium-3 redux: The helium isotope ratio of the Orion nebula

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