MITEoR: a scalable interferometer for precision 21 cm cosmology
Author(s)
Tegmark, Max Erik
Buza, Victor
Dillon, Joshua Shane
Gharibyan, Hrant
Kunz, Eben A.
Liu, Adrian Chi-Yan
Losh, Jonathan L.
Lutomirski, Andrew Michael
Morrison, Scott D.
Narayanan, Siddharth Madhavan
Date Issued
October 2014
Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Citation
Zheng, H., M. Tegmark, V. Buza, J. S. Dillon, H. Gharibyan, J. Hickish, E. Kunz, et al. “MITEoR: a Scalable Interferometer for Precision 21 Cm Cosmology.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 445, no. 2 (October 8, 2014): 1084–1103.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We report on the MIT Epoch of Reionization (MITEoR) experiment, a pathfinder low-frequency radio interferometer whose goal is to test technologies that improve the calibration precision and reduce the cost of the high-sensitivity 3D mapping required for 21 cm cosmology. MITEoR accomplishes this by using massive baseline redundancy, which enables both automated precision calibration and correlator cost reduction. We demonstrate and quantify the power and robustness of redundancy for scalability and precision. We find that the calibration parameters precisely describe the effect of the instrument upon our measurements, allowing us to form a model that is consistent with χ[superscript 2] per degree of freedom <1.2 for as much as 80 per cent of the observations. We use these results to develop an optimal estimator of calibration parameters using Wiener filtering, and explore the question of how often and how finely in frequency visibilities must be reliably measured to solve for calibration coefficients. The success of MITEoR with its 64 dual-polarization elements bodes well for the more ambitious Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array project and other next-generation instruments, which would incorporate many identical or similar technologies.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stu1773
