FAST Drift Scan Survey for HI Intensity Mapping: I. Preliminary Data Analysis

This work presents the initial results of the drift-scan observation for the neutral hydrogen ( HI) intensity mapping survey with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The data analyzed in this work were collected in night observations from 2019 through 2021. The primary findings are based on 28 hr of drift-scan observation carried out over 7 nights in 2021, which covers 60 deg(2) sky area. Our main findings are, first, our calibration strategy can successfully correct both the temporal and bandpass gain variation over the 4 hr drift-scan observation. Second, the continuum maps of the surveyed region are made with frequency resolution of 28 kHz and pixel area of 2.95 arcmin(2). The pixel noise levels of the continuum maps are slightly higher than the forecast assuming T-sys = 20 K, which are 36.0 mK (for 10.0 s integration time) at the 1050-1150 MHz band, and 25.9 mK (for 16.7 s integration time) at the 1323-1450 MHz band, respectively. Third, the flux-weighted differential number count is consistent with the NRAO-VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) catalog down to the confusion limit similar to 7 mJy beam(-1). Finally, the continuum flux measurements of the sources are consistent with those found in the literature. The difference in the flux measurement of 81 isolated NVSS sources is about 6.3%. Our research offers a systematic analysis for the FAST HI intensity mapping drift-scan survey and serves as a helpful resource for further cosmology and associated galaxies sciences with the FAST drift-scan survey.

Automated summary

This work presents the initial results of drift-scan observation for the HI intensity mapping survey with FAST. The findings show that the calibration strategy can correct gain variation and the continuum maps have slightly higher pixel noise levels than predicted. The flux-weighted differential number count is consistent with the NVSS catalog down to the confusion limit of 7 mJy beam(-1).