Biased Reionisation and Non-Gaussianity in Redshifted 21cm Intensity Maps of the Reionisation Epoch

Spatial dependence in the statistics of redshifted 21cm fluctuations promises to provide the most powerful probe of the reionisation epoch. In this paper we consider the second and third moments of the redshifted 21cm intensity distribution using a simple model that accounts for galaxy bias during the reionisation process. We demonstrate that skewness in redshifted 21cm maps should be substantial throughout the reionisation epoch and on all angular scales, owing to the effects of galaxy bias which leads to early reionisation in over-dense regions of the IGM. The variance (or powerspectrum) of 21cm fluctuations will exhibit a minimum in redshift part way through the reionisation process, when the global ionisation fraction is around 50%. This minimum is generic, and is due to the transition from 21cm intensity being dominated by over-dense too under-dense regions as reionisation progresses. We show that the details of the reionisation history, including the presence of radiative feedback are encoded in the evolution of the auto-correlation and skewness functions with redshift and mean IGM neutral fraction. The amplitudes of fluctuations are particularly sensitive to the masses of ionising sources, and vary by an order of magnitude for astrophysically plausible models. We discuss the detection of skewness by first generation instruments, and conclude that the Mileura Widefield Array–Low Frequency Demonstrator will have sufficient sensitivity to detect skewness on a range of angular scales at redshifts near the end of reionisation, while a subsequent instrument of 10 times the collecting area could map out the evolution of skewness in detail. The observation of a minimum in variance during the reionisation history, and the detection of skewness would both provide important confirmation of the cosmological origin of redshifted 21cm intensity fluctuations.