Radiative transfer of 21-cm line through ionized cavities in an expanding universe

The optical depth parameterization is typically used to study the 21-cm signals associated with the properties of the neutral hydrogen (H I) gas and the ionization morphology during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR), without solving the radiative transfer equation. To assess the uncertainties resulting from this simplification, we conduct explicit radiative transfer calculations using the cosmological 21-cm line radiative transfer (C21LRT) code and examine the imprints of ionization structures on the 21-cm spectrum. We consider a globally averaged reionization history and implement fully ionized cavities (H II bubbles) of diameters d ranging from 0.01 to 10 Mpc at epochs within the emission and the absorption regimes of the 21-cm global signal. The single-ray C21LRT calculations show that the shape of the imprinted spectral features are primarily determined by d and the 21-cm line profile, which is parametrized by the turbulent velocity of the H I gas. It reveals the spectral features tied to the transition from ionized to neutral regions that calculations based on the optical depth parametrization were unable to capture. We also present analytical approximations of the calculated spectral features of the H II bubbles. The multiple-ray calculations show that the apparent shape of an H II bubble (of d = 5 Mpc at z = 8), because of the finite speed of light, differs depending on whether the bubble's ionization front is stationary or expanding. Our study shows the necessity of properly accounting for the effects of line-continuum interaction, line broadening, and cosmological expansion to correctly predict the EoR 21-cm signals.