Connecting CO Intensity Mapping to Molecular Gas and Star Formation in
  the Epoch of Galaxy Assembly
  Intensity mapping, which images a single spectral line from unresolved
galaxies across cosmological volumes, is a promising technique for probing the
early universe. Here we present predictions for the intensity map and power
spectrum of the CO(1-0) line from galaxies at z ~ 2.4 -2.8, based on a
parameterized model for the galaxy-halo connection, and demonstrate the extent
to which properties of high-redshift galaxies can be directly inferred from
such observations. We find that our fiducial prediction should be detectable by
a realistic experiment. Motivated by significant modeling uncertainties, we
demonstrate the effect on the power spectrum of varying each parameter in our
model. Using simulated observations, we infer constraints on our model
parameter space with an MCMC procedure, and show corresponding constraints on
the LIR-LCO relation and the CO luminosity function. These constraints would be
complementary to current high-redshift galaxy observations, which can detect
the brightest galaxies but not complete samples from the faint end of the
luminosity function. By probing these populations in aggregate, CO intensity
mapping could be a valuable tool for probing molecular gas and its relation to
star formation in high-redshift galaxies.
