Speaker
Description
Radio telescopes tomographically characterise the Universe thanks to detecting the redshifted 21 cm radiation emitted by cosmic neutral hydrogen, HI. One of the most significant challenges for performing this measurement is removing the contaminants, i.e., orders of magnitude more intense foregrounds coupled with not-yet-characterised instrumental systematics. In this talk, I will discuss how we address this challenge with first-of-their-kind data from the MeerKAT single-dish observations. Within the MeerKLASS collaboration, we started an effort to test and optimise the available contaminant cleaning methods directly on data. We assess their effectiveness by measuring the expected cross-correlation signal with an overlapping galaxy dataset. I'll present our results, which are encouraging and relevant for the forthcoming direct detection of the IM signal with MeerKAT. Our ongoing work demonstrates that a radio array operating as a collection of independent telescopes can probe the IM cosmological signal, marking a milestone for the cosmology science case with the entire SKAO (which the MeerKAT dishes will be part of).
| Topics | Cosmology |
|---|
