Gravitational wave informed inference of 21-cm global signal parameters

Abstract

Understanding how and when the first stars and galaxies formed remains one of the central challenges in modern cosmology. These structures emerged during the transition from the Dark Ages to the Cosmic Dawn, a period that remains observationally unconstrained despite strong theoretical progress. During this epoch, neutral hydrogen absorbed a fraction of cosmic microwave background photons through its 21-cm hyperfine transition, producing a 21-cm absorption signal whose evolution encodes the early Universe’s thermal and ionization history. However, extracting the underlying astrophysical parameters from this signal is limited by severe parameter degeneracies, which cannot be resolved without independent observational probes. The next-generation gravitational wave (GW) detectors, such as Cosmic Explorer, will observe binary black hole (BBH) mergers up to very large redshifts and hence will detect a fraction of them formed within the redshift range ⁠. The merger rate of these BBHs will depend on the star formation rate density (SFRD) at these redshifts, together with the BBH formation efficiency and a time delay distribution. Therefore, the merger rate of these BBHs can work as a tracer of the SFRD in the redshift range ⁠. In this Letter, we establish a novel multi-messenger framework and present a proof-of-principle concept of how the observations of BBH mergers form next-generation GW detectors can improve the inference of parameters generating the 21-cm cosmic hydrogen signal, and help break degeneracies between them.