arXiv subjects

Aaron Parsons

Publications and source records attributed to Aaron Parsons.

28 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

New Limits on Polarized Power Spectra at 126 and 164 MHz: Relevance to Epoch of Reionization Measurements

Polarized foreground emission is a potential contaminant of attempts to measure the fluctuation power spectrum of highly redshifted 21 cm HI emission from the epoch of reionization. Using the Donald C. Backer Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER), we present limits on the observed power spectra of all four Stokes parameters in two frequency bands, centered at 126 MHz ($z=10.3$) and 164 MHz ($z=7.66$) for a three-month observing campaign of a 32-antenna deployment, for which unpolarized power spectrum results have been reported at $z=7.7$ (Parsons et al 2014) and $7.5 < z < 10.5$ (Jacobs et al 2014). The power spectra in this paper are processed in the same way as in those works, and show no definitive detection of polarized power. This non-detection appears to be largely due to the suppression of polarized power by ionospheric rotation measure fluctuations, which strongly affect Stokes Q and U. We are able to show that the net effect of polarized leakage is a negligible contribution at the levels of of the limits reported in Parsons et al 2014 and Jacobs et al 2014.

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arXiv2016

A Decade of Developing Radio-Astronomy Instrumentation using CASPER Open-Source Technology

The Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER) has been working for a decade to reduce the time and cost of designing, building and deploying new digital radio-astronomy instruments. Today, CASPER open-source technology powers over 45 scientific instruments worldwide, and is used by scientists and engineers at dozens of academic institutions. In this paper we catalog the current offerings of the CASPER collaboration, and instruments past and present built by CASPER users and developers. We describe the ongoing state of software development, as CASPER looks to support a broader range of programming environments and hardware and ensure compatibility with the latest vendor tools.

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arXiv2016

The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array Dish II: Characterization of Spectral Structure with Electromagnetic Simulations and its science Implications

We use time-domain electromagnetic simulations to determine the spectral characteristics of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Arrays (HERA) antenna. These simulations are part of a multi-faceted campaign to determine the effectiveness of the dish's design for obtaining a detection of redshifted 21 cm emission from the epoch of reionization. Our simulations show the existence of reflections between HERA's suspended feed and its parabolic dish reflector that fall below -40 dB at 150 ns and, for reasonable impedance matches, have a negligible impact on HERA's ability to constrain EoR parameters. It follows that despite the reflections they introduce, dishes are effective for increasing the sensitivity of EoR experiments at relatively low cost. We find that electromagnetic resonances in the HERA feed's cylindrical skirt, which is intended to reduce cross coupling and beam ellipticity, introduces significant power at large delays ($-40$ dB at 200 ns) which can lead to some loss of measurable Fourier modes and a modest reduction in sensitivity. Even in the presence of this structure, we find that the spectral response of the antenna is sufficiently smooth for delay filtering to contain foreground emission at line-of-sight wave numbers below $k_\parallel \lesssim 0.2$ $h$Mpc$^{-1}$, in the region where the current PAPER experiment operates. Incorporating these results into a Fisher Matrix analysis, we find that the spectral structure observed in our simulations has only a small effect on the tight constraints HERA can achieve on parameters associated with the astrophysics of reionization.

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arXiv2016

Effects of Antenna Beam Chromaticity on Redshifted 21~cm Power Spectrum and Implications for Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array

Unaccounted for systematics from foregrounds and instruments can severely limit the sensitivity of current experiments from detecting redshifted 21~cm signals from the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). Upcoming experiments are faced with a challenge to deliver more collecting area per antenna element without degrading the data with systematics. This paper and its companions show that dishes are viable for achieving this balance using the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) as an example. Here, we specifically identify spectral systematics associated with the antenna power pattern as a significant detriment to all EoR experiments which causes the already bright foreground power to leak well beyond ideal limits and contaminate the otherwise clean EoR signal modes. A primary source of this chromaticity is reflections in the antenna-feed assembly and between structures in neighboring antennas. Using precise foreground simulations taking wide-field effects into account, we provide a framework to set cosmologically-motivated design specifications on these reflections to prevent further EoR signal degradation. We show HERA will not be impeded by such spectral systematics and demonstrate that even in a conservative scenario that does not perform removal of foregrounds, HERA will detect EoR signal in line-of-sight $k$-modes, $k_\parallel \gtrsim 0.2\,h$~Mpc$^{-1}$, with high significance. All baselines in a 19-element HERA layout are capable of detecting EoR over a substantial observing window on the sky.

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arXiv2015

Measuring the Cosmological 21 cm Monopole with an Interferometer

A measurement of the cosmological 21 cm signal remains a promising but as-of-yet unattained ambition of radio astronomy. A positive detection would provide direct observations of key unexplored epochs of our cosmic history, including the cosmic dark ages and reionization. In this paper, we concentrate on measurements of the spatial monopole of the 21 cm brightness temperature as a function of redshift (the "global signal"). Most global experiments to date have been single-element experiments. In this paper, we show how an interferometer can be designed to be sensitive to the monopole mode of the sky, thus providing an alternate approach to accessing the global signature. We provide simple rules of thumb for designing a global signal interferometer and use numerical simulations to show that a modest array of tightly packed antenna elements with moderately sized primary beams (full-width-half-max of $\sim$40$^\circ$) can compete with typical single-element experiments in their ability to constrain phenomenological parameters pertaining to reionization and the pre-reionization era. We also provide a general data analysis framework for extracting the global signal from interferometric measurements (with analysis of single-element experiments arising as a special case) and discuss trade-offs with various data analysis choices. Given that interferometric measurements are able to avoid a number of systematics inherent in single-element experiments, our results suggest that interferometry ought to be explored as a complementary way to probe the global signal.

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arXiv2012

A Sensitivity and Array-Configuration Study for Measuring the Power Spectrum of 21cm Emission from Reionization

Telescopes aiming to measure 21cm emission from the Epoch of Reionization must toe a careful line, balancing the need for raw sensitivity against the stringent calibration requirements for removing bright foregrounds. It is unclear what the optimal design is for achieving both of these goals. Via a pedagogical derivation of an interferometer's response to the power spectrum of 21cm reionization fluctuations, we show that even under optimistic scenarios, first-generation arrays will yield low-SNR detections, and that different compact array configurations can substantially alter sensitivity. We explore the sensitivity gains of array configurations that yield high redundancy in the uv-plane -- configurations that have been largely ignored since the advent of self-calibration for high-dynamic-range imaging. We first introduce a mathematical framework to generate optimal minimum-redundancy configurations for imaging. We contrast the sensitivity of such configurations with high-redundancy configurations, finding that high-redundancy configurations can improve power-spectrum sensitivity by more than an order of magnitude. We explore how high-redundancy array configurations can be tuned to various angular scales, enabling array sensitivity to be directed away from regions of the uv-plane (such as the origin) where foregrounds are brighter and where instrumental systematics are more problematic. We demonstrate that a 132-antenna deployment of the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER) observing for 120 days in a high-redundancy configuration will, under ideal conditions, have the requisite sensitivity to detect the power spectrum of the 21cm signal from reionization at a 3σlevel at k<0.25h Mpc^{-1} in a bin of Δln k=1. We discuss the tradeoffs of low- versus high-redundancy configurations.

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arXiv2011

Current and Nascent SETI Instruments

Here we describe our ongoing efforts to develop high-performance and sensitive instrumentation for use in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). These efforts include our recently deployed Search for Extraterrestrial Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations Spectrometer (SERENDIP V.v) and two instruments currently under development; the Heterogeneous Radio SETI Spectrometer (HRSS) for SETI observations in the radio spectrum and the Optical SETI Fast Photometer (OSFP) for SETI observations in the optical band. We will discuss the basic SERENDIP V.v instrument design and initial analysis methodology, along with instrument architectures and observation strategies for OSFP and HRSS. In addition, we will demonstrate how these instruments may be built using low-cost, modular components and programmed and operated by students using common languages, e.g. ANSI C.

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arXiv2009

Digital Instrumentation for the Radio Astronomy Community

Time-to-science is an important figure of merit for digital instrumentation serving the astronomical community. A digital signal processing (DSP) community is forming that uses shared hardware development, signal processing libraries, and instrument architectures to reduce development time of digital instrumentation and to improve time-to-science for a wide variety of projects. We suggest prioritizing technological development supporting the needs of this nascent DSP community. After outlining several instrument classes that are relying on digital instrumentation development to achieve new science objectives, we identify key areas where technologies pertaining to interoperability and processing flexibility will reduce the time, risk, and cost of developing the digital instrumentation for radio astronomy. These areas represent focus points where support of general-purpose, open-source development for a DSP community should be prioritized in the next decade. Contributors to such technological development may be centers of support for this DSP community, science groups that contribute general-purpose DSP solutions as part of their own instrumentation needs, or engineering groups engaging in research that may be applied to next-generation DSP instrumentation.

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arXiv2009

A Scalable Correlator Architecture Based on Modular FPGA Hardware, Reuseable Gateware, and Data Packetization

A new generation of radio telescopes is achieving unprecedented levels of sensitivity and resolution, as well as increased agility and field-of-view, by employing high-performance digital signal processing hardware to phase and correlate large numbers of antennas. The computational demands of these imaging systems scale in proportion to BMN^2, where B is the signal bandwidth, M is the number of independent beams, and N is the number of antennas. The specifications of many new arrays lead to demands in excess of tens of PetaOps per second. To meet this challenge, we have developed a general purpose correlator architecture using standard 10-Gbit Ethernet switches to pass data between flexible hardware modules containing Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chips. These chips are programmed using open-source signal processing libraries we have developed to be flexible, scalable, and chip-independent. This work reduces the time and cost of implementing a wide range of signal processing systems, with correlators foremost among them,and facilitates upgrading to new generations of processing technology. We present several correlator deployments, including a 16-antenna, 200-MHz bandwidth, 4-bit, full Stokes parameter application deployed on the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization.

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arXiv2006

First results from the Arecibo Galactic HI Survey: the disk/halo interface region in the outer Galaxy

The consortium for Galactic studies with the Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA) is conducting a neutral hydrogen (HI) survey of the whole Arecibo sky (declination range from -1 to 38 degrees), with high angular (3.5') and velocity resolution (0.2 km/s). The precursor observations with ALFA of a region in the Galactic anti-center reveal numerous isolated, small (a few pc in size), and cold (T_k<400 K) HI clouds at low negative velocities, distinctly separated from the HI disk emission (`low-velocity clouds', LVCs). These clouds are most likely located in the transition region between the Galactic disk and halo (at scale heights of 60--900 pc), yet they have properties of typical cold neutral clouds. LVCs are colder and, most likely, smaller and less massive than Lockman's clouds in the disk/halo interface region of the inner Galaxy. Our observations demonstrate that the cloudy structure of the interface region is most likely a general phenomenon, not restricted to the inner Galaxy. LVCs have sizes and radial velocities in agreement with the expectations for clouds formed in low-temperature fountain flows, although we measure a factor of ten higher HI column densities. Alternatively, LVCs could represent the final stages of the infalling intergalactic material in the on-going construction of the Galaxy. In the same dataset at higher negative velocities, we have discovered a `companion' HI cloud located 50' southwest of CHVC186+19-114. CHVC186+19-114 is a typical compact high velocity cloud (HVC) with a well-defined core/envelope structure. The companion cloud has a diameter of only 7'x9', and is one of the smallest HVCs known, most likely stripped from the main cloud through the interactions with the halo medium.

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