Study of redshifted H I from the Epoch of Reionization with drift scan

Paul, Sourabh ; Sethi, Shiv K. ; Subrahmanyan, Ravi ; Shankar, N. Udaya ; Dwarakanath, K. S. ; Deshpande, Avinash A. ; Bernardi, Gianni ; Bowman, Judd D. ; Briggs, Frank ; Cappallo, Roger J. ; Corey, Brian E. ; Emrich, David ; Gaensler, Bryan M. ; Goeke, Robert F. ; Greenhill, Lincoln J. ; Hazelton, Bryna J. ; Hewitt, Jacqueline N. ; Johnston-Hollitt, Melanie ; Kaplan, David L. ; Kasper, Justin C. ; Kratzenberg, Eric ; Lonsdale, Colin J. ; Lynch, Mervyn J. ; McWhirter, S. Russell ; Mitchell, Daniel A. ; Morales, Miguel F. ; Morgan, Edward H. ; Oberoi, Divya ; Ord, Stephen M. ; Prabu, Thiagaraj ; Rogers, Alan E. E. ; Roshi, Anish A. ; Srivani, K. S. ; Tingay, Steven J. ; Wayth, Randall B. ; Waterson, Mark ; Webster, Rachel L. ; Whitney, Alan R. ; Williams, Andrew J. ; Williams, Christopher L. (2014) Study of redshifted H I from the Epoch of Reionization with drift scan The Astrophysical Journal, 793 (1). Article ID 28-13 pages. ISSN 0004-637X

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Official URL: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637...

Related URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/793/1/28

Abstract

Detection of the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) in the redshifted 21 cm line is a challenging task. Here, we formulate the detection of the EoR signal using the drift scan strategy. This method potentially has better instrumental stability compared to the case where a single patch of sky is tracked. We demonstrate that the correlation time between measured visibilities could extend up to 1-2 hr for an interferometer array such as the Murchison Widefield Array, which has a wide primary beam. We estimate the EoR power based on a cross-correlation of visibilities over time and show that the drift scan strategy is capable of detecting the EoR signal with a signal to noise that is comparable/better compared to the tracking case. We also estimate the visibility correlation for a set of bright point sources and argue that the statistical inhomogeneity of bright point sources might allow their separation from the EoR signal.

Item Type:	Article
Source:	Copyright of this article belongs to Institute of Physics.
Keywords:	Cosmology: Observations; Cosmology: Theory; Dark Ages; Reionization; First Stars; Techniques: Interferometric
ID Code:	114373
Deposited On:	22 May 2018 10:49
Last Modified:	22 May 2018 10:49

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