Holographic Beam Mapping of the CHIME Pathfinder Array

Abstract

The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Pathfinder radio telescope is currently surveying the northern hemisphere between 400 and 800 MHz. By mapping the large scale structure of neutral hydrogen through its redshifted 21 cm line emission between $z\sim 0.8-2.5$ CHIME will contribute to our understanding of Dark Energy. Bright astrophysical foregrounds must be separated from the neutral hydrogen signal, a task which requires precise characterization of the polarized telescope beams. Using the DRAO John A. Galt 26 m telescope, we have developed a holography instrument and technique for mapping the CHIME Pathfinder beams. We report the status of the instrument and initial results of this effort.

16 pages, 9 figures. Submitted to Proc. SPIE, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation (2016)

References in corpus (5)

• Cosmology at Low Frequencies: The 21 cm Transition and the High-Redshift Universe
• The VLA Low-frequency Sky Survey
• Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Intensity Mapping as a Test of Dark Energy
• The Standing Wave Phenomenon in Radio Telescopes; Frequency Modulation of the WSRT Primary Beam
• The DRAO 26-m Large Scale Polarization Survey at 1.41 GHz

Cited by in corpus (5)

• A Second Source of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts
• Line-Intensity Mapping: 2017 Status Report
• Measuring HERA's primary beam in-situ: methodology and first results
• Dual Polarization Measurements of MWA Beampatterns at 137 MHz
• A Polarization Pipeline for Fast Radio Bursts Detected by CHIME/FRB