Spectral line intensity mapping has been proposed as a promising tool to
efficiently probe the cosmic reionization and the large-scale structure.
Without detecting individual sources, line intensity mapping makes use of all
available photons and measures the integrated light in the source confusion
limit, to efficiently map the three-dimensional matter distribution on large
scales as traced by a given emission line. One particular challenge is the
separation of desired signals from astrophysical continuum foregrounds and line
interlopers. Here we present a technique to extract large-scale structure
information traced by emission lines from different redshifts, embedded in a
three-dimensional intensity mapping data cube. The line redshifts are
distinguished by the anisotropic shape of the power spectra when projected onto
a common coordinate frame. We consider the case where high-redshift [CII] lines
are confused with multiple low-redshift CO rotational lines. We present a
semi-analytic model for [CII] and CO line estimates based on the cosmic
infrared background measurements, and show that with a modest instrumental
noise level and survey geometry, the large-scale [CII] and CO power spectrum
amplitudes can be successfully extracted from a confusion-limited data set,
without external information. We discuss the implications and limits of this
technique for possible line intensity mapping experiments.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, accepted by Ap
