TY - JOUR
T1 - Sensitivity of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array and its build-out stages to one-point statistics from redshifted 21 cm observations
AU - Kittiwisit, Piyanat
AU - Bowman, Judd
AU - Jacobs, Daniel
AU - Beardsley, Adam P.
AU - Thyagarajan, Nithyanandan
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) award AST-1109156. P.K. is supported by the Royal Thai Government Scholarship under the Development for Promotion of Science and Technology Talent Project. DCJ is supported by anNSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-1401708. APB is supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-1701440. NT is a Jansky Fellow of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Funding Information:
This work is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) award AST-1109156. P.K. is supported by the Royal Thai Government Scholarship under the Development for Promotion of Science and Technology Talent Project. DCJ is supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-1401708. APB is supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-1701440. NT is a Jansky Fellow of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Author(s).
PY - 2018/3/1
Y1 - 2018/3/1
N2 - We present a baseline sensitivity analysis of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) and its build-out stages to one-point statistics (variance, skewness, and kurtosis) of redshifted 21 cm intensity fluctuation from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) based on realistic mock observations. By developing a full-sky 21 cm light-cone model, taking into account the proper field of view and frequency bandwidth, utilizing a realistic measurement scheme, and assuming perfect foreground removal, we show that HERA will be able to recover statistics of the sky model with high sensitivity by averaging over measurements from multiple fields. All build-out stages will be able to detect variance, while skewness and kurtosis should be detectable for HERA128 and larger. We identify sample variance as the limiting constraint of the measurements at the end of reionization. The sensitivity can also be further improved by performing frequency windowing. In addition, we find that strong sample variance fluctuation in the kurtosis measured from an individual field of observation indicates the presence of outlying cold or hot regions in the underlying fluctuations, a feature that can potentially be used as an EoR bubble indicator.
AB - We present a baseline sensitivity analysis of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) and its build-out stages to one-point statistics (variance, skewness, and kurtosis) of redshifted 21 cm intensity fluctuation from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) based on realistic mock observations. By developing a full-sky 21 cm light-cone model, taking into account the proper field of view and frequency bandwidth, utilizing a realistic measurement scheme, and assuming perfect foreground removal, we show that HERA will be able to recover statistics of the sky model with high sensitivity by averaging over measurements from multiple fields. All build-out stages will be able to detect variance, while skewness and kurtosis should be detectable for HERA128 and larger. We identify sample variance as the limiting constraint of the measurements at the end of reionization. The sensitivity can also be further improved by performing frequency windowing. In addition, we find that strong sample variance fluctuation in the kurtosis measured from an individual field of observation indicates the presence of outlying cold or hot regions in the underlying fluctuations, a feature that can potentially be used as an EoR bubble indicator.
KW - Cosmology: observations
KW - Dark ages
KW - First stars
KW - Methods: statistical
KW - Reionization
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U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stx3099
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stx3099
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85040256023
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 474
SP - 4487
EP - 4499
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 4
ER -