FIRST SEASON MWA EOR POWER SPECTRUM RESULTS AT REDSHIFT 7

2016/08/22 by A. P. Beardsley, B. J. Hazelton, I. S. Sullivan +63
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Data set #Figure of merit #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Large Synoptic Survey Telescope #Limit (mathematics) #Pipeline (software) #Power (physics) #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Redshift #Reionization #Spectral density #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.IM

paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/833/1/102

21 pages, 16 figures, accepted to ApJ

arxiv created 2016/08/22 · openalex created_date 2016/09/16 · openalex publication_date 2016/12/09 · arxiv updated 2016/12/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) has collected hundreds of hours of Epoch of Reionization (EoR) data and now faces the challenge of overcoming foreground and systematic contamination to reduce the data to a cosmological measurement. We introduce several novel analysis techniques, such as cable reflection calibration, hyper-resolution gridding kernels, diffuse foreground model subtraction, and quality control methods. Each change to the analysis pipeline is tested against a two-dimensional power spectrum figure of merit to demonstrate improvement. We incorporate the new techniques into a deep integration of 32 hours of MWA data. This data set is used to place a systematic-limited upper limit on the cosmological power spectrum of mK 2 at k = 0.27 h Mpc −1 and z = 7.1, consistent with other published limits, and a modest improvement (factor of 1.4) over previous MWA results. From this deep analysis, we have identified a list of improvements to be made to our EoR data analysis strategies. These improvements will be implemented in the future and detailed in upcoming publications.

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