Journal article
Fundamental Limitations on the Calibration of Redundant 21 cm Cosmology Instruments and Implications for HERA and the SKA
R Byrne, MF Morales, B Hazelton, W Li, N Barry, AP Beardsley, R Joseph, J Pober, I Sullivan, C Trott
Astrophysical Journal | IOP PUBLISHING LTD | Published : 2019
Abstract
Precise instrument calibration is critical to the success of 21 cm cosmology experiments. Unmitigated errors in calibration contaminate the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) signal, precluding a detection. Barry et al. characterized one class of inherent errors that emerge from calibrating to an incomplete sky model; however, it has been unclear if errors in the sky model affect the calibration of redundant arrays. In this paper, we show that redundant calibration is vulnerable to errors from sky model incompleteness even in the limit of perfect antenna positioning and identical beams. These errors are at a level that can overwhelm the EoR signal and prevent a detection in crucial power spectrum m..
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Grants
Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was directly supported by NSF grants #1613855, #1506024, #1835421, #1613040, and #1835421. Computation on the Amazon Web Services public cloud was supported by the University of Washington student-led Research Computing Club with funding provided by the University of Washington Student Technology Fee Committee. Parts of this research were supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project number CE170100013. A.P.B. is supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award #1701440. C.M.T. is supported by an ARC Future Fellowship under grant FT180100196. The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) is a Joint Venture of Curtin University and The University of Western Australia, funded by the Western Australian State government.