Paperclips and Supercomputers: a Low-Frequency Radio Cosmology Program
Aaron Parsons
UC Berkeley
Several new projects have taken the field, or are advancing rapidly
toward funding, in the area of low-frequency radio astronomy. A variety
of experiments are now on track to use 21cm emission to study the
pre-reionization dark ages (e.g. LEDA, EDGES), the epoch of reionization
(e.g. PAPER, MWA, GMRT, LOFAR) and baryon acoustic oscillations
(e.g. CHIME, BAOBAB). These efforts share a fundamental technique --
intensity mapping -- and employ inexpensive "paper-clip" antennas
combined with supercomputer-scale digital correlators. I will describe
recent progress we have made at UC Berkeley's Radio Astronomy Laboratory
advancing the intensity mapping technique in the context of PAPER, and
extrapolating our experience to a new experiment, BAOBAB. I will focus on
principles that span all of 21cm cosmology, and will argue for why, despite
the different science objectives that these experiments are pursuing, these
efforts will benefit from being more tightly integrated with one another.
Date: | Mardi, le 26 février 2013 |
Heure: | 16:00 |
Lieu: | Université McGill |
| Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103) |
|