4.7 Article

Deep multiredshift limits on Epoch of Reionization 21 cm power spectra from four seasons of Murchison Widefield Array observations

Journal

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 493, Issue 4, Pages 4711-4727

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staa414

Keywords

instrumentation: interferometers; methods: statistical

Funding

  1. Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) [CE170100013]
  2. ARC Future Fellowship [FT180100321]
  3. Western Australian State government
  4. JSPS KAKENHI [JP15H05896, JP16H05999, JP17H01110]
  5. JSPS
  6. Australian Research Council LIEF grant [LE160100031]
  7. Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto
  8. Australian Government (NCRIS)
  9. Western Australian Government
  10. Australian Government
  11. Australian Research Council [LE160100031] Funding Source: Australian Research Council

Ask authors/readers for more resources

We compute the spherically averaged power spectrum from four seasons of data obtained for the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) project observed with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). We measure the EoR power spectrum over k = 0.07-3.0 h Mpc(-1) at redshifts z = 6.5-8.7. The largest aggregation of 110 h on EoR0 high band (3340 observations), yields a lowest measurement of (43 mK)(2) = 1.8 x 10(3) mK(2) at k = 0.14 h Mpc(-1) and z = 6.5 (2 sigma thermal noise plus sample variance). Using the Real-Time System to calibrate and the CHIPS pipeline to estimate power spectra, we select the best observations from the central five pointings within the 2013-2016 observing seasons, observing three independent fields and in two frequency bands. This yields 13 591 2-min snapshots (453 h), based on a quality assurance metric that measures ionospheric activity. We perform another cut to remove poorly calibrated data, based on power in the foreground-dominated and EoR-dominated regions of the two-dimensional power spectrum, reducing the set to 12 569 observations (419 h). These data are processed in groups of 20 observations, to retain the capacity to identify poor data, and used to analyse the evolution and structure of the data over field, frequency, and data quality. We subsequently choose the cleanest 8935 observations (298 h of data) to form integrated power spectra over the different fields, pointings, and redshift ranges.

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