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A detection of the 21-cm signal power spectrum from the Epoch of Reionization is imminent, thanks to consistent advancements from telescopes such as LOFAR, MWA, and HERA, along with the development of SKA. In light of this progress, it is crucial to expand the parameter space of simulations used to infer astrophysical properties from this signal. In this work, we explore the role of cosmological parameters such as the Hubble constant $H_0$ and the matter clustering amplitude $\sigma_8$, whose values as provided by measurements at different redshifts are in tension. We run $N$-body simulations using GADGET-4, and post-process them with the reionization simulation code POLAR, that uses L-GALAXIES to include galaxy formation and evolution properties and GRIZZLY to execute 1-D radiative transfer of ionizing photons in the intergalactic medium (IGM). We compare our results with the latest JWST observations and explore which astrophysical properties for different cosmologies are necessary to match the observed UV luminosity functions at redshifts $z = 10$ and 9. Additionally, we explore the impact of these parameters on the observed 21-cm signal power spectrum, focusing on the redshifts within the range of LOFAR 21-cm signal observations ($z \approx 8.5-10$). Despite differences in cosmological and astrophysical parameters, the 21-cm power spectrum at these redshifts agrees with presently observed upper limits. This suggests the need for broader physical parameter spaces for inference modeling to account for all models that agree with observations. However, we also propose stronger constraining power by using a combination of galactic and IGM observables., Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)

The use of Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) for foregrounds mitigation in data collected by the LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR) to measure the high-redshift 21-cm signal power spectrum has been shown to have issues of signal loss when the 21-cm signal covariance is misestimated. To address this problem, we have recently introduced covariance kernels obtained by using a Machine Learning based Variational Auto-Encoder (VAE) algorithm in combination with simulations of the 21-cm signal. In this work, we apply this framework to 141 hours ($\approx 10$ nights) of LOFAR data at $z \approx 9.1$, and report revised upper limits of the 21-cm signal power spectrum. Overall, we agree with past results reporting a 2-$\sigma$ upper limit of $\Delta^2_{21} < (80)^2~\rm mK^2$ at $k = 0.075~h~\rm Mpc^{-1}$. Further, the VAE-based kernel has a smaller correlation with the systematic excess noise, and the overall GPR-based approach is shown to be a good model for the data. Assuming an accurate bias correction for the excess noise, we report a 2-$\sigma$ upper limit of $\Delta^2_{21} < (25)^2~\rm mK^2$ at $k = 0.075~h~\rm Mpc^{-1}$. However, we still caution to take the more conservative approach to jointly report the upper limits of the excess noise and the 21-cm signal components., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) Letters

The high redshift 21-cm signal promises to be a crucial probe of the state of the intergalactic medium (IGM). Understanding the connection between the observed 21-cm power spectrum and the physical quantities intricately associated with the IGM is crucial to fully understand the evolution of our Universe. In this study, we develop an emulator using artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the 21-cm power spectrum from a given set of IGM properties, namely, the bubble size distribution and the volume averaged ionization fraction. This emulator is implemented within a standard Bayesian framework to constrain the IGM parameters from a given 21-cm power spectrum. We compare the performance of the Bayesian method to an alternate method using ANN to predict the IGM parameters from a given input power spectrum, and find that both methods yield similar levels of accuracy, while the ANN is significantly faster. We also use this ANN method of parameter estimation to predict the IGM parameters from a test set contaminated with noise levels expected from the SKA-LOW instrument after 1000 hours of observation. Finally, we train a separate ANN to predict the source parameters from the IGM parameters directly, at a redshift of $z=9.1$, demonstrating the possibility of a non-analytic inference of the source parameters from the IGM parameters for the first time. We achieve high accuracies, with R2-scores ranging between $0.898-0.978$ for the ANN emulator and between $0.966-0.986$ and $0.817-0.981$ for the predictions of IGM parameters from 21-cm power spectrum and source parameters from IGM parameters, respectively. The predictions of the IGM parameters from the Bayesian method incorporating the ANN emulator leads to tight constraints with error bars around $\pm{0.14}$ on the IGM parameters.

The redshifted 21-cm signal from the epoch of reionization (EoR) directly probes the ionization and thermal states of the intergalactic medium during that period. In particular, the distribution of the ionized regions around the radiating sources during EoR introduces scale-dependent features in the spherically-averaged EoR 21-cm signal power spectrum. The goal is to study these scale-dependent features at different stages of reionization using numerical simulations and build a source model-independent framework to probe the properties of the intergalactic medium using EoR 21-cm signal power spectrum measurements. Under the assumption of high spin temperature, we modelled the redshift evolution of the ratio of EoR 21-cm brightness temperature power spectrum and the corresponding density power spectrum using an ansatz consisting of a set of redshift and scale-independent parameters. This set of eight parameters probes the redshift evolution of the average ionization fraction and the quantities related to the morphology of the ionized regions. We have tested this ansatz on different reionization scenarios generated using different simulation algorithms and found that it is able to recover the redshift evolution of the average neutral fraction within an absolute deviation $\lesssim 0.1$. Our framework allows us to interpret 21-cm signal power spectra in terms of parameters related to the state of the IGM. This source model-independent framework can efficiently constrain reionization scenarios using multi-redshift power spectrum measurements with ongoing and future radio telescopes such as LOFAR, MWA, HERA, and SKA. This will add independent information regarding the EoR IGM properties., Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables, Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Spectral fitting of X-ray data usually involves minimizing statistics like the chi-square and the Cash statistic. Here we discuss their limitations and introduce two measures based on the cumulative sum (CuSum) of model residuals to evaluate whether model complexity could be increased: the percentage of bins exceeding a nominal threshold in a CuSum array (pct$_{CuSum}$), and the excess area under the CuSum compared to the nominal (p$_\textit{area}$). We demonstrate their use with an application to a $\textit{Chandra}$ ACIS spectral fit., Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, published in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society (RNAAS)

The 21-cm line emitted by neutral hydrogen is the most promising probe of the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). Multiple radio interferometric instruments are on the cusp of detecting its power spectrum. It is therefore essential to deliver robust theoretical predictions, enabling sound inference of the coeval Universe properties. The nature of this signal traditionally required the modelling of $\mathcal{O}(10^{7-8} \, {\rm Mpc}^3)$ volumes to suppress the impact of cosmic variance. However, the recently-proposed Fixed & Paired (F&P) approach uses carefully-crafted simulation pairs to achieve equal results in smaller volumes. In this work, we thoroughly test the applicability of and improvement granted by this technique to different observables of the 21-cm signal from the EoR. We employ radiation-magneto-hydrodynamics simulations to ensure the most realistic physical description of this epoch, greatly improving over previous studies using a semi-numerical approach without accurate galaxy formation physics and radiative transfer. We estimate the statistical improvement granted by the F&P technique on predictions of the skewness, power spectrum, bispectrum and ionized regions size distribution of the 21-cm signal at redshift $7 \leq z \leq 10$ (corresponding to $\geq80\%$ of the gas being neutral). We find that the effective volume of F&P simulations is at least 3.5 times larger than traditional simulations. This directly translates into an equal improvement in the computational cost (in terms of time and memory). Finally, we confirm that a combination of different observables like skewness, power spectrum and bispectrum across different redshifts can be utilised to maximise the improvement., Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)

We carry out detailed spectral and timing analyses of the $Chandra$ X-ray data of HD 179949, a prototypical example of a star with a close-in giant planet with possible star-planet interaction (SPI) effects. We find a low coronal abundance $A({\rm Fe})/A({\rm H}){\approx}0.2$ relative to the solar photospheric baseline of Anders & Grevesse (1989), and significantly lower than the stellar photosphere as well. We further find low abundances of high First Ionization Potential (FIP) elements $A({\rm O})/A({\rm Fe}){\lesssim}1$, $A({\rm Ne})/A({\rm Fe}){\lesssim}0.1$, but with indications of higher abundances of $A({\rm N})/A({\rm Fe}){\gg}1, A({\rm Al})/A({\rm Fe}){\lesssim}10$. We estimate a FIP bias for this star in the range $\approx{-0.3}$ to ${-0.1}$, larger than the ${\lesssim}-$0.5 expected for stars of this type, but similar to stars hosting close-in hot Jupiters. We detect significant intensity variability over time scales ranging from 100 s - 10 ks, and also evidence for spectral variability over time scales of 1-10 ks. We combine the $Chandra$ flux measurements with $Swift$ and XMM-$Newton$ measurements to detect periodicities and determine that the dominant signal is tied to the stellar polar rotational period, consistent with expectations that the corona is rotational-pole dominated. We also find evidence for periodicity at both the planetary orbital frequency and at its beat frequency with the stellar polar rotational period, suggesting the presence of a magnetic connection between the planet and the stellar pole. If these periodicities represent an SPI signal, it is likely driven by a quasi-continuous form of heating (e.g., magnetic field stretching) rather than sporadic, hot, impulsive flare-like reconnections., Comment: 26 pages, 12 figures, 11 tables. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal

Quantitative estimates of the basic properties of the circumgalactic medium(CGM), such as its density and metallicity, depend on the spectrum of incident UV background radiation. Models of UV background are known to have large variations, mainly because they are synthesized using poorly constrained parameters, which introduce uncertainty in the inferred properties of the CGM. Here, we quantify this uncertainty using a large set of new UV background models with physically motivated toy models of metal-enriched CGM. We find that, the inferred density and metallicity of low-density ($10^{-5}$ cm$^{-3}$) gas is uncertain by factors of 6.3 and 3.2, whereas high density ($10^{-3}$ cm$^{-3}$) gas by factors of 4 and 1.6, respectively. The variation in the shape of the UV background models is entirely responsible for such a variation in the metallicity while variation in the density arises from both normalization and shape of the UV background. Moreover, we find a harder (softer) UV background infers higher (lower) density and metallicity. We also study warm-hot gas at $T= 10^{5.5}$ K and find that metallicity is robustly estimated but the inferred density is uncertain by a factor of 3 to 5.4 for low to high-density gas. Such large uncertainties in density and metallicity may severely limit the studies of the CGM and demand better observational constraints on the input parameters used in synthesizing UV background., Comment: 19 pages, 16 figures, 2 tables: accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS)

Aims: We investigate the orbital and phase space properties of loss cone stars that interact strongly with a hard, high-redshift binary supermassive black hole (SMBH) system formed in a cosmological scenario. Methods: We use a novel hybrid integration approach that combines the direct N-body code $\varphi$-GRAPE with ETICS, a collisionless code that employs the self-consistent field method for force calculation. The hybrid approach shows considerable speed-up over direct summation for particle numbers $> 10^6$, while retaining accuracy of direct N-body for a subset of particles. During the SMBH binary evolution we monitor individual stellar interactions with the binary in order to identify stars that noticeably contribute to the SMBH binary hardening. Results: We successfully identify and analyze in detail the properties of stars that extract energy from the binary. We find that the summed energy changes seen in these stars match very well with the overall binary energy change, demonstrating that stellar interactions are the primary drivers of SMBH binary hardening in triaxial, gas-poor systems. The slight triaxiality of our system results in efficient loss cone refilling, avoiding the final parsec problem. We distinguish three different populations of interactions based on their apocenter. We find a clear prevalence of interactions co-rotating with the binary. Nevertheless, retrograde interactions are the most energetic, contributing only slightly less than the prograde population to the overall energy exchange. The most energetic interactions are also likely to result in a change of sign in the angular momentum of the star. We estimate the merger timescale of the binary to be $\approx 20$ $\mathrm{Myr}$, a value larger by a factor of two than the timescale reported in a previous study., Comment: 17 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics