The 21-cm signature of the first stars during the Lyman–Werner feedback era

The formation of the first stars is an exciting frontier area in astronomy. Early redshifts (z ∼ 20) have become observationally promising as a result of a recently recognized effect of a supersonic relative velocity between the dark matter and gas. This effect produces prominent structure on 100 comoving Mpc scales, which makes it much more feasible to detect 21-cm fluctuations from the epoch of first heating. We use semi-numerical hybrid methods to follow for the first time the joint evolution of the X-ray and Lyman–Werner radiative backgrounds, including the effect of the supersonic streaming velocity on the cosmic distribution of stars. We incorporate self-consistently the negative feedback on star formation induced by the Lyman–Werner radiation, which dissociates molecular hydrogen and thus suppresses gas cooling. We find that the feedback delays the X-ray heating transition by z ∼ 2, but leaves a promisingly large fluctuation signal over a broad redshift range. The large-scale power spectrum is predicted to reach a maximal signal-to-noise ratio of S/N ∼ 3–4 at z ∼ 18 (for a projected first-generation instrument), with S/N >1 out to z ∼ 22–23. We hope to stimulate additional numerical simulations as well as observational efforts focused on the epoch prior to cosmic reionization.