Sensitivity of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array and its Build-out Stages to One-point Statistics from Redshifted 21 cm Observations

Abstract

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 lightcone model, taking into account the proper field of view and frequency bandwidth, utilising 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 variance measurement while skewness and kurtosis measurements will be primarily limited by thermal noise. The sensitivity can be improved by performing frequency binning and windowing. In addition, we find that strong sample variance fluctuation in the kurtosis measured from an individual field of observation indicates the present of outlying cold or hot regions in the underlying fluctuations, a feature that can potentially be used as an EoR bubble indicator. This manuscript is altered from the originally published paper to reflect corrections in the erratum.

14 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, altered from the originally published paper to reflect corrections in the erratum

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• Statistical Detection of IGM Structures during Cosmic Reionization using Absorption of the Redshifted 21 cm line by HI against Compact Background Radio Sources
• Quantiles as Robust Probes of Non-Gaussianity in 21-cm Images
• Extreme Spheres: Counts-in-cells for 21cm intensity mapping
• Using the sample variance of 21cm maps as a tracer of the ionisation topology
• Measurements of one-point statistics in 21 cm intensity maps via foreground avoidance strategy
• Exploring One-point Statistics in HERA Phase I Data: Effects of Foregrounds and Systematics on Measuring One-Point Statistics
• The impact of lunar topography on the 21-cm power spectrum for grid-based arrays : Insights for the Dark-ages EXplorer (DEX)