Will point sources spoil 21-cm tomography?

被引:79
作者
Liu, Adrian [1 ,4 ]
Tegmark, Max [1 ,4 ]
Zaldarriaga, Matias [2 ,3 ]
机构
[1] MIT, Dept Phys, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
[2] Harvard Smithsonian Ctr Astrophys, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
[3] Harvard Univ, Jefferson Lab Phys, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
[4] MIT, Kavli Inst, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
关键词
methods: data analysis; techniques: interferometric; early Universe; radio lines: general; 21 CENTIMETER TOMOGRAPHY; HIGH-REDSHIFT; INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM; DARK-AGES; REIONIZATION; FOREGROUNDS; EPOCH; FLUCTUATIONS; EMISSION; RADIATION;
D O I
10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.14426.x
中图分类号
P1 [天文学];
学科分类号
0704 ;
摘要
21-cm tomography is emerging as a promising probe of the cosmological dark ages and the epoch of reionization, as well as a tool for observational cosmology in general. However, serious sources of foreground contamination must be subtracted for experimental efforts to be viable. In this paper, we focus on the removal of unresolved extragalactic point sources with smooth spectra, and evaluate how the residual foreground contamination after cleaning depends on instrumental and algorithmic parameters. A crucial but often ignored complication is that the synthesized beam of an interferometer array shrinks towards higher frequency, causing complicated frequency structure in each sky pixel as 'frizz' far from the beam centre contracts across unresolved radio sources. We find that current-generation experiments should none the less be able to clean out this point source contamination adequately, and quantify the instrumental and algorithmic design specifications required to meet this foreground challenge.
引用
收藏
页码:1575 / 1587
页数:13
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