The Ooty Wide Field Array

Abstract

We describe here an ongoing upgrade to the legacy Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT).The ORT is a cylindrical parabolic cylinder 530mx30m in size operating at a frequency of 326.5 (or z ~ 3.35 for the HI 21cm line). The telescope has been constructed on a north-south hill slope whose gradient is equal to the latitude of the hill, making it effectively equitorially mounted. The feed consists of an array of 1056 dipoles. The key feature of this upgrade is the digitisation and cross-correlation of the signals of every set of 4-dipoles. This converts the ORT into a 264 element interferometer with a field of view of 2 degrees x 27cos(delta) degrees . This upgraded instrument is called the Ooty Wide Field Array (OWFA). This paper briefly describes the salient features of the upgrade, as well as its main science drivers. There are three main science drivers viz. (1) Observations of the large scale distribution of HI in the post-reionisation era (2) studies of the propagation of plasma irregularities through the inner heliosphere and (3) blind surveys for transient sources. More details on the upgrade, as well as on the expected science uses can be found in other papers in this special issue.

To appear in the special section of the JAA on the Ooty Wide Field Array

References in corpus (21)

• A bright millisecond radio burst of extragalactic origin
• A Population of Fast Radio Bursts at Cosmological Distances
• 21-cm cosmology
• Dense magnetized plasma associated with a fast radio burst
• Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Pathfinder
• The Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Broadband and Broad-beam Array: Design Overview and Sensitivity Forecasts
• Using HI to probe large scale structures at z ~ 3
• Fast radio bursts may originate from nearby flaring stars
• HI as a Probe of the Large Scale Structure in the Post-Reionization Universe
• HI Fluctuations at Large Redshifts: I--Visibility correlation
• Estimation of Cosmological Parameters from HI Observations of Post-reionization Epoch
• On modelling the Fast Radio Burst (FRB) population and event rate predictions
• Prospects for detecting the 326.5 MHz redshifted 21 cm HI signal with the Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT)
• A High Speed Networked Signal Processing Platform for Multi-element Radio Telescopes
• Fisher matrix predictions for detecting the cosmological 21 cm signal with the Ooty Wide Field Array (OWFA)
• Multiwavelength Study on Solar and Interplanetary Origins of the Strongest Geomagnetic Storm of Solar Cycle 23
• Space Weather and Solar Wind Studies with OWFA
• Fisher Matrix Based Predictions for Measuring the z = 3.35 Binned 21-cm Power Spectrum using the Ooty Wide Field Array (OWFA)
• Simulating the z = 3.35 HI 21-cm visibility signal for the Ooty Wide Field Array(OWFA)
• Prospects of detecting HI using redshifted 21 cm radiation at z ~ 3
• FRB event rate predictions for the Ooty Wide Field Array

Cited by in corpus (19)

• Data Analysis for Precision 21 cm Cosmology
• Detection of Cosmological 21 cm Emission with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
• High-redshift post-reionization cosmology with 21cm intensity mapping
• DAYENU: A Simple Filter of Smooth Foregrounds for Intensity Mapping Power Spectra
• Detailed study of ELAIS N1 field with the uGMRT -- II. Source Properties and Spectral Variation Of Foreground Power Spectrum from 300-500 MHz Observations
• Modelling redshift-space distortion in the post-reionization $\mathrm{HI}$ 21-cm power spectrum
• Modelling the post-reionization neutral hydrogen ($\mathrm{HI}$) 21-cm bispectrum
• The Cross-correlation of KSZ Effect and 21 cm Intensity Mapping with Tidal Reconstruction
• Towards 21-cm Intensity Mapping at $z=2.28$ with uGMRT using the Tapered Gridded Estimator I: Foreground Avoidance
• Post-correlation beamformer for time-domain studies of pulsars and transients
• Simulated foreground predictions for HI at z = 3.35 with the Ooty Wide Field Array: I. Instrument and the foregrounds
• Towards $21$-cm intensity mapping at $z=2.28$ with uGMRT using the tapered gridded estimator III: Foreground removal
• Non-Gaussianity of diffuse Galactic synchrotron emission at 408 MHz
• An analytical method to simulate the HI 21-cm visibility signal for intensity mapping experiments
• Towards $21$-cm intensity mapping at $z=2.28$ with uGMRT using the tapered gridded estimator II: Cross-polarization power spectrum
• Simulated Predictions for HI at $z=3.35$ with the Ooty Wide Field Array (OWFA) -- II: Foreground Avoidance
• A Spherical Harmonic Analysis of the Ooty Wide Field Array (OWFA) Visibility Signal
• Constraining warm dark matter power spectrum using the cross-correlation of HI 21 cm signal and the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest
• Prospects of detecting Fast Radio Bursts using Indian Radio Telescopes