Detection of Cosmic Structures using the Bispectrum Phase. II. First Results from Application to Cosmic Reionization Using the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array

Abstract

Characterizing the epoch of reionization (EoR) at $z\gtrsim 6$ via the redshifted 21 cm line of neutral Hydrogen (HI) is critical to modern astrophysics and cosmology, and thus a key science goal of many current and planned low-frequency radio telescopes. The primary challenge to detecting this signal is the overwhelmingly bright foreground emission at these frequencies, placing stringent requirements on the knowledge of the instruments and inaccuracies in analyses. Results from these experiments have largely been limited not by thermal sensitivity but by systematics, particularly caused by the inability to calibrate the instrument to high accuracy. The interferometric bispectrum phase is immune to antenna-based calibration and errors therein, and presents an independent alternative to detect the EoR HI fluctuations while largely avoiding calibration systematics. Here, we provide a demonstration of this technique on a subset of data from the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) to place approximate constraints on the brightness temperature of the intergalactic medium (IGM). From this limited data, at $z=7.7$ we infer "$1\sigma$" upper limits on the IGM brightness temperature to be $\le 316$ "pseudo" mK at ${\kappa }_{\parallel }=0.33$ "pseudo" $h$ Mpc${}^{-1}$ (data-limited) and $\le 1000$ "pseudo" mK at ${\kappa }_{\parallel }=0.875$ "pseudo" $h$ Mpc${}^{-1}$ (noise-limited). The "pseudo" units denote only an approximate and not an exact correspondence to the actual distance scales and brightness temperatures. By propagating models in parallel to the data analysis, we confirm that the dynamic range required to separate the cosmic HI signal from the foregrounds is similar to that in standard approaches, and the power spectrum of the bispectrum phase is still data-limited (at $\gtrsim 10^6$ dynamic range) indicating scope for further improvement in sensitivity as the array build-out continues.

22 pages, 12 figures (including sub-figures). Published in PhRvD. Abstract may be slightly abridged compared to the actual manuscript due to length limitations on arXiv

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Exploring the cosmic dawn and epoch of reionization with 21cm line
• Statistical Detection of IGM Structures during Cosmic Reionization using Absorption of the Redshifted 21 cm line by HI against Compact Background Radio Sources
• Detection of Cosmic Structures using the Bispectrum Phase. I. Mathematical Foundations
• Studying the Multi-frequency Angular Power Spectrum of the Cosmic Dawn 21-cm Signal
• Skew spectrum and smoothed skewness of 21-cm signals from epoch of reionization
• Simulations of primary beam effects on the cosmic bispectrum phase observed with the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array