Violation of statistical isotropy and homogeneity in the 21-cm power spectrum

Most inflationary models predict primordial perturbations to be statistically isotropic and homogeneous. Cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations, however, indicate a possible departure from statistical isotropy in the form of a dipolar power modulation at large angular scales. Alternative models of inflation, beyond the simplest single-field slow-roll models, can generate a small power asymmetry, consistent with these observations. Observations of clustering of quasars show, however, agreement with statistical isotropy at much smaller angular scales. Here, we propose to use off-diagonal components of the angular power spectrum of the 21-cm fluctuations during the dark ages to test this power asymmetry. We forecast results for the planned SKA radio array, a future radio array, and the cosmic-variance-limited case as a theoretical proof of principle. Our results show that the 21-cm line power spectrum will enable access to information at very small scales and at different redshift slices, thus improving upon the current CMB constraints by $\sim 2$ orders of magnitude for a dipolar asymmetry and by $\sim 1-3$ orders of magnitude for a quadrupolar asymmetry case.