arXiv subjects

Shintaro Yoshiura

Publications and source records attributed to Shintaro Yoshiura.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

The Impact of Tandem Redundant/Sky-Based Calibration in MWA Phase II Data Analysis

Precise instrumental calibration is of crucial importance to 21-cm cosmology experiments. The Murchison Widefield Array's (MWA) Phase II compact configuration offers us opportunities for both redundant calibration and sky-based calibration algorithms; using the two in tandem is a potential approach to mitigate calibration errors caused by inaccurate sky models. The MWA Epoch of Reionization (EoR) experiment targets three patches of the sky (dubbed EoR0, EoR1, and EoR2) with deep observations. Previous work in \cite{Li_2018} and \cite{Wenyang_2019} studied the effect of tandem calibration on the EoR0 field and found that it yielded no significant improvement in the power spectrum over sky-based calibration alone. In this work, we apply similar techniques to the EoR1 field and find a distinct result: the improvements in the power spectrum from tandem calibration are significant. To understand this result, we analyze both the calibration solutions themselves and the effects on the power spectrum over three nights of EoR1 observations. We conclude that the presence of the bright radio galaxy Fornax A in EoR1 degrades the performance of sky-based calibration, which in turn enables redundant calibration to have a larger impact. These results suggest that redundant calibration can indeed mitigate some level of model-incompleteness error.

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arXiv2020

Probing Small Scale Primordial Power Spectrum with 21cm Line Global Signal

We argue that the global signal of neutral hydrogen 21cm line can be a powerful probe of primordial power spectrum on small scales. Since the amplitude of small scale primordial fluctuations is important to determine the early structure formation and the timing when the sources of Lyman $α$ photons are produced, they in turn affect the neutral hydrogen 21cm line signal. We show that the information of the position of the absorption trough can severely constrain the small scale amplitude of primordial fluctuations once astrophysical parameters relevant to the 21cm line signal are fixed. We also discuss how the uncertainties of astrophysical parameters affect the constraints.

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arXiv2020

Artificial neural networks for selection of pulsar candidates from the radio continuum surveys

Pulsar search with time-domain observation is very computationally expensive and data volume will be enormous with the next generation telescopes such as the Square Kilometre Array. We apply artificial neural networks (ANNs), a machine learning method, for efficient selection of pulsar candidates from radio continuum surveys, which are much cheaper than time-domain observation. With observed quantities such as radio fluxes, sky position and compactness as inputs, our ANNs output the "score" that indicates the degree of likeliness of an object to be a pulsar. We demonstrate ANNs based on existing survey data by the TIFR GMRT Sky Survey (TGSS) and the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) and test their performance. Precision, which is the ratio of the number of pulsars classified correctly as pulsars to that of any objects classified as pulsars, is about 96$\%$. Finally, we apply the trained ANNs to unidentified radio sources and our fiducial ANN with five inputs (the galactic longitude and latitude, the TGSS and NVSS fluxes and compactness) generates 2,436 pulsar candidates from 456,866 unidentified radio sources. These candidates need to be confirmed if they are truly pulsars by time-domain observations. More information such as polarization will narrow the candidates down further.

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arXiv2019

Gridded and direct Epoch of Reionisation bispectrum estimates using the Murchison Widefield Array

We apply two methods to estimate the 21~cm bispectrum from data taken within the Epoch of Reionisation (EoR) project of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). Using data acquired with the Phase II compact array allows a direct bispectrum estimate to be undertaken on the multiple redundantly-spaced triangles of antenna tiles, as well as an estimate based on data gridded to the $uv$-plane. The direct and gridded bispectrum estimators are applied to 21 hours of high-band (167--197~MHz; $z$=6.2--7.5) data from the 2016 and 2017 observing seasons. Analytic predictions for the bispectrum bias and variance for point source foregrounds are derived. We compare the output of these approaches, the foreground contribution to the signal, and future prospects for measuring the bispectra with redundant and non-redundant arrays. We find that some triangle configurations yield bispectrum estimates that are consistent with the expected noise level after 10 hours, while equilateral configurations are strongly foreground-dominated. Careful choice of triangle configurations may be made to reduce foreground bias that hinders power spectrum estimators, and the 21~cm bispectrum may be accessible in less time than the 21~cm power spectrum for some wave modes, with detections in hundreds of hours.

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arXiv2018

Impact of EDGES 21cm Global Signal on Primordial Power Spectrum

We investigate the impact of the recent observation of the 21cm global signal by EDGES on primordial power spectrum, particularly focusing on the running parameters $α_s$ and $ β_s$ which characterize the detailed scale dependence of the primordial spectrum. When primordial power spectrum is enhanced/suppressed on small scales, the structure formation proceeds faster/slower and changes the abundance of small size halos, which affects the sources of Lyman $α$ radiation at high redshifts to alter the position of the absorption line. Recent observation of EDGES detected the 21cm absorption line at $z=17.2$ and this result also indicates that the brightness temperature is consistent with zero for $z \lesssim 14$ and $z \gtrsim 22$, which can exclude a scenario giving the absorption line at such redshifts. We argue that the bound on the running parameters can be obtained by requiring that the absorption line should not exceed observational bounds at such redshift ranges and found that some parameter space of $α_s$ and $β_s$ allowed by Planck may be disfavored for some values of astrophysical parameters.

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arXiv2018

Detectability of 21cm-signal during the Epoch of Reionization with 21cm-Lyman-$α$ emitter cross-correlation. I

Detection of the redshifted 21cm-line signal from neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) is complicated by intense foregrounds such as galactic synchrotron and extragalactic radio galaxies. The 21cm-Lyman-$α$ emitter(LAE) cross-correlation is one of the tools available to reduce the foreground effects because the foreground emission from such radio sources is statistically independent of LAE distribution. LAE surveys during the EoR at redshifts $z=6.6$ and $7.3$ are ongoing by the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC). Additionally, Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) will provide precise redshift information of the LAEs discovered by the HSC survey. In this paper, we investigate the detectability of the 21cm signal with the 21cm-LAE cross-correlation by using our improved reionization simulations. We also focus on the error budget and evaluate it quantitatively in order to consider a strategy to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. In addition, we explore an expansion of the LAE survey to suggest optimal survey parameters and show a potential to measure a characteristic size of ionized bubbles via the turnover scale of the cross-power spectrum. As a result, we find that the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) has ability to detect the cross-power spectrum signal on large scales by combining LAE Deep field survey of HSC. We also show that the sensitivity is improved dramatically at small scales by adding redshift information from the PFS measurements. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) has a potential to measure the turnover scale with an accuracy of $6\times10^{-3}~{\rm Mpc^{-1}}$.

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arXiv2017

The variance of dispersion measure of high-redshift transient objects as a probe of ionized bubble size during reionization

The dispersion measure (DM) of high-redshift $(z \gtrsim 6)$ transient objects such as Fast Radio Bursts can be a powerful tool to probe the intergalactic medium during the Epoch of Reionization. In this paper, we study the variance of the DMs of objects with the same redshift as a potential probe of the size distribution of ionized bubbles. We calculate the DM variance with a simple model with randomly-distributed spherical bubbles. It is found that the DM variance reflects the characteristics of the probability distribution of the bubble size. We find the variance can be measured precisely enough to obtain the information on the typical size with a few hundred sources at a single redshift.

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arXiv2017

Constraining the Contribution of Galaxies and Active Galactic Nuclei to Cosmic Reionization

Understanding the detailed process of cosmic reionization is one of the remaining problems in astrophysics and cosmology. Here we construct a model of cosmic reionization that includes contribution from high-$z$ galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and calculate the reionization and thermal histories with the model. To keep the model to be general and realistic, we vary the escape fraction of ionizing photons, $f_{\rm esc}$, and the faint-end slope of the AGN luminosity function at high redshifts, $α_{\rm hz}$, within the constraints from the observed cosmic star formation history and the observed bright-end UV luminosity functions at $z \leq 6$. Additionally, we model the spectral energy distribution (SED) of AGNs which depends on the Eddington ratio and the black-hole mass. By comparing the computed reionization histories with the observed \ion{H}{i} fractions and the optical depth for Thomson scattering from Planck, we find that $α_{\rm hz} > -1.5$ and $f_{\rm esc} < 0.15$ are favored when we employ the bright-end luminosity function obtained by Giallongo et al. Our result suggests that an AGN-dominated model with the abundance of faint-AGNs being as large as the estimate by Giallongo et al. is allowed only if the contribution from high-z galaxies is almost negligible, while a galaxy-dominant model is also allowed. We also find that the shape of SED has a significant impact on the thermal history. Therefore it is expected that measurements of the thermal state of the IGM provide useful information on properties of ionizing sources.

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arXiv2017

Constraining the EoR model parameters with the 21cm bispectrum

We perform a Fisher analysis to estimate the expected constraints on the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) model parameters (i.e., minimum virial temperature, the ionizing efficiency and the mean free path of ionizing photons) taking into account the thermal noise of the exisitting telescopes, MWA and LOFAR. We consider how the inclusion of the 21cm bispectrum improves the constraints compared to using the power spectrum alone. Assuming that we perfectly remove the foreground, we found that the bispectrum, which is calculated by the 21cmFAST code, can constrain the EoR model parameters more tightly than the power spectrum since the bispectrum is more sensitive to the EoR model parameters than the power spectrum. We also found that degeneracy between the EoR model parameters can be broken by combining the bispectrum with the power spectrum.

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arXiv2016

Studying topological structure in the epoch of reionization with 3D-Minkowski functionals of 21cm line fluctuations

The brightness temperature of the redshifted 21cm line brings rich information on the Inter Galactic Medium (IGM) from the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization (EoR). While the power spectrum is a useful tool to statistically investigate the 21cm signal, the 21cm brightness temperature field is highly non-Gaussian, and the power spectrum is inadequate to characterize the non-Gaussianity. The Minkowski Functionals (MFs) are promising tools to extract non-gaussian features of the 21cm signal and give topological information such as morphology of ionized bubbles. In this work, we study the 21cm line signal in detail with MFs. To promote understanding of basic features of the 21cm signal, we calculate the MFs of not only the hydrogen neutral fraction but the matter density and spin temperature, which contribute to the brightness temperature fluctuations. We find that the structure of the brightness temperature depends mainly on the ionized fraction and the spin temperature at late and early stages of the EoR, respectively. Further, we investigate the redshift evolution of the MFs at $7 < z < 20$. Then, we find that, after the onset of reionization, the MFs reflect mainly the ionized bubble property. In addition, the MFs are sensitive to model parameters which are related to the topology of ionized bubbles and we consider the possibility of constraining the parameters by the future 21cm signal observations.

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arXiv2016

Expected constraints on models of the epoch of reionization with the variance and skewness in redshifted 21cm-line fluctuations

Redshifted 21cm-line signal from neutral hydrogens in the intergalactic medium (IGM) gives a direct probe of the epoch of reionization (EoR). In this paper, we investigate the potential of the variance and skewness of the probability distribution function of the 21cm brightness temperature for constraining EoR models. These statistical quantities are simple, easy to calculate from the observed visibility and thus suitable for the early exploration of the EoR with ongoing telescopes such as the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR). We show, by performing Fisher analysis, that the variance and skewness at $z=7-9$ are complementary to each other to constrain the EoR model parameters such as the minimum virial temperature of halos which host luminous objects, ionizing efficiency and mean free path of ionizing photons in the IGM. Quantitatively, the constraining power highly depends on the quality of the foreground subtraction and calibration. We give a best case estimate of the constraints on the parameters, neglecting the systematics other than the thermal noise.

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arXiv2016

21cm-line bispectrum as method to probe Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization

Redshifted 21cm signal is a promising tool to investigate the state of intergalactic medium (IGM) in the Cosmic Dawn (CD) and Epoch of Reionization(EoR). In our previous work (Shimabukuro et al 2015), we studied the variance and skewness to give a clear interpretation of 21cm power spectrum and found that skewness is a good indicator of the epoch when X-ray heating becomes effective. Thus, the non-Gaussian feature of the spatial distribution of the 21cm signal is expected to be useful to investigate the astrophysical effects in the CD and EoR. In this paper, in order to investigate such a non-Gaussian feature in more detail, we focus on the bispectrum of the 21cm signal. It is expected that the 21cm brightness temperature bispectrum is produced by non-gaussianity due to the various astrophysical effects such as Wouthysen-Field (WF) effect, X-ray heating and reionization. We study the various properties of 21cm bispectrum such as scale dependence, shape dependence and redshift evolution. And also we study the contribution from each component of 21cm bispectrum. We find that the contribution from each component has characteristic scale-dependent feature, and it is expected that we could obtain more detailed information on the IGM in the CD and EoR by using the 21cm bispectrum in the future experiments, combined with the power spectrum and skewness.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Japanese Cosmic Dawn/Epoch of Reionization Science with the Square Kilometre Array

Cosmic reionization is known to be a major phase transition of the gas in the Universe. Since astronomical objects formed in the early Universe, such as the first stars, galaxies and black holes, are expected to have caused cosmic reionization, the formation history and properties of such objects are closely related to the reionization process. In spite of the importance of exploring reionization, our understandings regarding reionization is not sufficient yet. Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a next-generation large telescope that will be operated in the next decade. Although several programs of next-generation telescopes are currently scheduled, the SKA will be the unique telescope with a potential to directly observe neutral hydrogen up to z~30, and provide us with valuable information on the Cosmic Dawn (CD) and the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). The early science with the SKA will start in a few years; it is thus the time for us to elaborate a strategy for CD/EoR Science with the SKA. The purpose of this document is to introduce Japanese scientific interests in the SKA project and to report results of our investigation.

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arXiv2015

Studying 21cm power spectrum with one-point statistics

The redshifted 21cm line signal from neutral hydrogens is a promising tool to probe the cosmic dawn and the epoch of reionization (EoR). Ongoing and future low-frequency radio experiments are expected to detect its fluctuations, especially through the power spectrum. In this paper, we give a physical interpretation of the time evolution of the power spectrum of the 21cm brightness temperature fluctuations, which can be decomposed into dark matter density, spin temperature and neutral fraction of hydrogen fluctuations. From the one-point statistics of the fluctuations, such as variance and skewness, we find that the peaks and dips in the time evolution are deeply related to X-ray heating of the intergalactic gas, which controls the spin temperature. We suggest the skewness of the brightness temperature distribution is a key observable to identify the onset of X-ray heating.

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arXiv2015

Sensitivity for 21cm Bispectrum from Epoch of Reionization

The 21cm line brightness temperature brings rich information about Epoch of Reionizaton (EoR) and high-$z$ universe (Cosmic Dawn and Dark Age). While the power spectrum is a useful tool to investigate the EoR signal statistically, higher-order statistics such as bispectrum are also valuable because the EoR signal is expected to be highly non-Gaussian. In this paper, we develop a formalism to calculate the bispectrum contributed from the thermal noise taking array configularion of telescopes into account, by extending a formalism for the power spectrum \cite{2006ApJ...653..815M}. We apply our formalism to the ongoing and future telescopes such as expanded Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) and Square Kilometre Array (SKA). We find that expanded MWA does not have enough sensitivity to detect the bispectrum signal. On the other hand, LOFAR has better sensitivity and will be able to detect the peaks of the bispectrum as a function of redshift at large scales with comoving wavenumber $k \lesssim 0.03 {\rm Mpc}^{-1}$. The SKA has enough sensitivity to detect the bispectrum for much smaller scales $k \lesssim 0.3 {\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ and redshift $z \lesssim 20$

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