Constraints on the temperature of the intergalactic medium at z=8.4 with 21-cm observations

We compute robust lower limits on the spin temperature, $T_{\mathrm{S}}$, of the $z=8.4$ intergalactic medium (IGM), implied by the upper limits on the 21-cm power spectrum recently measured by PAPER-64. Unlike previous studies which used a single epoch of reionization (EoR) model, our approach samples a large parameter space of EoR models: the dominant uncertainty when estimating constraints on $T_{\mathrm{S}}$. Allowing $T_{\mathrm{S}}$ to be a free parameter and marginalizing over EoR parameters in our Markov Chain Monte Carlo code 21CMMC, we infer $T_{\mathrm{S}}\ge 3\mathrm{K}$ (corresponding approximately to $1\sigma$) for a mean IGM neutral fraction of ${\bar{x}}_{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{I}}\gtrsim 0.1$. We further improve on these limits by folding-in additional EoR constraints based on: (i) the dark fraction in QSO spectra, which implies a strict upper limit of ${\bar{x}}_{\mathrm{H}\mathrm{I}}[z=5.9]\le 0.06+0.05(1\sigma )$; and (ii) the electron scattering optical depth, ${\tau }_{\mathrm{e}}=0.066\pm 0.016(1\sigma )$ measured by the Planck satellite. By restricting the allowed EoR models, these additional observations tighten the approximate $1\sigma$ lower limits on the spin temperature to $T_{\mathrm{S}}\ge 6$ K. Thus, even such preliminary 21-cm observations begin to rule out extreme scenarios such as `cold reionization’, implying at least some prior heating of the IGM. The analysis framework developed here can be applied to upcoming 21-cm observations, thereby providing unique insights into the sources which heated and subsequently reionized the very early Universe.