Transformative Science from the Lunar Farside: Observations of the Dark Ages and Exoplanetary Systems at Low Radio Frequencies

Abstract

The farside of the Moon is a pristine, quiet platform to conduct low radio frequency observations of the early Universe's Dark Ages, as well as space weather and magnetospheres associated with habitable exoplanets. In this paper, the astrophysics associated with NASA-funded concept studies will be described including a lunar-orbiting spacecraft, DAPPER, that will measure the 21 cm global spectrum at redshifts 40-80, and an array of low frequency dipoles on the lunar farside surface, FARSIDE, that would detect exoplanet magnetic fields. DAPPER observations (17-38 MHz), using a single cross-dipole antenna, will measure the amplitude of the 21 cm spectrum to the level required to distinguish the standard ΛCDM cosmological model from those of additional cooling models possibly produced by exotic physics such as dark matter interactions. FARSIDE has a notional architecture consisting of 128 dipole antennas deployed across a 10 km area by a rover. FARSIDE would image the entire sky each minute in 1400 channels over 0.1-40 MHz. This would enable monitoring of the nearest stellar systems for the radio signatures of coronal mass ejections and energetic particle events, and would also detect the magnetospheres of the nearest candidate habitable exoplanets. In addition, FARSIDE would determine the Dark Ages global 21 cm signal at yet lower frequencies and provide a pathfinder for power spectrum measurements.

15 pages, 9 figures, 1 table, to appear in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A

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• Signatures of Cosmic Ray Heating in 21-cm Observables
• Large-scale Array for Radio Astronomy on the Farside
• Influences of accreting primordial black holes on the global 21 cm signal in the dark ages
• Cosmic Radio Background from Primordial Black Holes at Cosmic Dawn
• Impact of radiation from primordial black holes on the 21-cm angular-power spectrum in the dark ages
• Primordial Magnetic Fields in Light of Dark Ages Global 21-cm Signal
• Ensuring Robustness in Training Set Based Global 21-cm Cosmology Analysis
• Lunar Far-Side Radio Arrays: A Preliminary Site Survey
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• Global signal in the redshifted hydrogen 21-cm line from the Dark Ages and Cosmic Dawn: Dependence on the nature of dark matter and modeling of first light
• The Electrical Design of a Membrane Antenna for Lunar-based Low-frequency Radio Telescope
• Astrophysical uncertainties challenge 21-cm forecasts: A primordial black hole case study
• Synthesis imaging with a lunar orbit array: I. global sky map and its systematics
• A Multi-Mechanism Hybrid Model of Peaked-Spectrum Radio Sources
• Influence of the deviation of the matter power spectrum at small scales on the global 21-cm signal at cosmic dawn
• Cosmological bounds on dark matter annihilation using dark ages 21-cm signal
• Upper Limits on Planet-Induced GHz Radio Emission from Inactive M Dwarfs
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