Cosmological 21cm experiments: Searching for a needle in a haystack

Abstract

There are several planned and ongoing experiments designed to explore the Epoch of Reionization (EoR), the pivotal period during which the gas in the intergalactic medium went from being entirely neutral to almost entirely ionized. These experiments will probe the EoR, through the redshifted 21 cm line from neutral hydrogen, using radio arrays: e.g. Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) and Murchinson Widefield Array (MWA). Unfortunately however, the cosmological 21 cm signal is highly contaminated by astrophysical foregrounds and by non-astrophysical and instrumental effects. Therefore, to reliably detect the cosmological signal, it is essential to understand very well all data components, their influence on the desired signal and explore additional complementary or corroborating probes of the EoR. These proceedings give an overview of observational constrains of the foregrounds, present theoretical efforts to model the foregrounds, and discuss a problem of the foreground removal. The major results are presented for the LOFAR-EoR experiment.

12 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in proceedings of "ISKAF2010 Science Meeting", PoS(ISKAF2010)028

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