The atomic hydrogen content of the post-reionization Universe

We present a comprehensive analysis of atomic hydrogen (H I) properties using a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation and N-body simulations covering a large cosmological volume at high resolution. We examine the HI mass function and the HI density, characterizing both their redshift evolution and their dependence on hosting halo mass. We analyse the HI content of dark matter haloes in the local Universe and up to redshift z = 5, discussing the contribution of different galaxy properties. We find that different assembly history plays a crucial role in the scatter of this relation. We propose new fitting functions useful for constructing mock HI maps with halo occupation distribution techniques. We investigate the HI clustering properties relevant for future 21 cm intensity mapping (IM) experiments, including the HI bias and the shot-noise level. The HI bias increases with redshift and it is roughly flat on the largest scales probed. The scale dependence is found at progressively larger scales with increasing redshift, apart from a dip feature at z = 0. The shot-noise values are consistent with the ones inferred by independent studies, confirming that shot noise will not be a limiting factor for IM experiments. We detail the contribution from various galaxy properties on the HI power spectrum and their relation to the halo bias. We find that HI poor satellite galaxies play an important role at the scales of the one-halo term. Finally, we present the 21 cm signal in redshift space, a fundamental prediction to be tested against data from future radio telescopes such as Square Kilometre Array.