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  1. Foreground mitigation is critical to all next-generation radio interferometers that target cosmology using the redshifted neutral hydrogen 21 cm emission line. Attempts to remove this foreground emission have led to new analysis techniques as well as new developments in hardware specifically dedicated to instrument beam and gain calibration, including stabilized signal injection into the interferometric array and drone-based platforms for beam mapping. The radio calibration sources currently used in the literature are broad-band incoherent sources that can only be detected as excess power and with no direct sensitivity to phase information. In this paper, we describe a digital radio source which uses Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) derived time stamps to form a deterministic signal that can be broadcast from an aerial platform. A copy of this source can be deployed locally at the instrument correlator such that the received signal from the aerial platform can be correlated with the local copy, and the resulting correlation can be measured in both amplitude and phase for each interferometric element. We define the requirements for such a source, describe an initial implementation and verification of this source using commercial Software Defined Radio boards, and present beam map slices from antenna range measurements using the commercial boards. We found that the commercial board did not meet all requirements, so we also suggest future directions using a more sophisticated chipset. 
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  2. Zmuidzinas, Jonas ; Gao, Jian-Rong (Ed.)
  3. Abstract

    We present a detection of 21 cm emission from large-scale structure (LSS) between redshift 0.78 and 1.43 made with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment. Radio observations acquired over 102 nights are used to construct maps that are foreground filtered and stacked on the angular and spectral locations of luminous red galaxies (LRGs), emission-line galaxies (ELGs), and quasars (QSOs) from the eBOSS clustering catalogs. We find decisive evidence for a detection when stacking on all three tracers of LSS, with the logarithm of the Bayes factor equal to 18.9 (LRG), 10.8 (ELG), and 56.3 (QSO). An alternative frequentist interpretation, based on the likelihood ratio test, yields a detection significance of 7.1σ(LRG), 5.7σ(ELG), and 11.1σ(QSO). These are the first 21 cm intensity mapping measurements made with an interferometer. We constrain the effective clustering amplitude of neutral hydrogen (Hi), defined asHI103ΩHIbHI+fμ2, where ΩHiis the cosmic abundance of Hi,bHiis the linear bias of Hi, and 〈fμ2〉 = 0.552 encodes the effect of redshift-space distortions at linear order. We findHI=1.510.97+3.60for LRGs (z= 0.84),HI=6.763.79+9.04for ELGs (z= 0.96), andHI=1.680.67+1.10for QSOs (z= 1.20), with constraints limited by modeling uncertainties at nonlinear scales. We are also sensitive to bias in the spectroscopic redshifts of each tracer, and we find a nonzero bias Δv= − 66 ± 20 km s−1for the QSOs. We split the QSO catalog into three redshift bins and have a decisive detection in each, with the upper bin atz= 1.30 producing the highest-redshift 21 cm intensity mapping measurement thus far.

     
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  4. Abstract

    We present cosmological constraints from a gravitational lensing mass map covering 9400 deg2reconstructed from measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from 2017 to 2021. In combination with measurements of baryon acoustic oscillations and big bang nucleosynthesis, we obtain the clustering amplitudeσ8= 0.819 ± 0.015 at 1.8% precision,S8σ8(Ωm/0.3)0.5=0.840±0.028, and the Hubble constantH0= (68.3 ± 1.1) km s−1Mpc−1at 1.6% precision. A joint constraint with Planck CMB lensing yieldsσ8= 0.812 ± 0.013,S8σ8(Ωm/0.3)0.5=0.831±0.023, andH0= (68.1 ± 1.0) km s−1Mpc−1. These measurements agree with ΛCDM extrapolations from the CMB anisotropies measured by Planck. We revisit constraints from the KiDS, DES, and HSC galaxy surveys with a uniform set of assumptions and find thatS8from all three are lower than that from ACT+Planck lensing by levels ranging from 1.7σto 2.1σ. This motivates further measurements and comparison, not just between the CMB anisotropies and galaxy lensing but also between CMB lensing probingz∼ 0.5–5 on mostly linear scales and galaxy lensing atz∼ 0.5 on smaller scales. We combine with CMB anisotropies to constrain extensions of ΛCDM, limiting neutrino masses to ∑mν< 0.13 eV (95% c.l.), for example. We describe the mass map and related data products that will enable a wide array of cross-correlation science. Our results provide independent confirmation that the universe is spatially flat, conforms with general relativity, and is described remarkably well by the ΛCDM model, while paving a promising path for neutrino physics with lensing from upcoming ground-based CMB surveys.

     
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  5. Abstract

    We present new measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing over 9400 deg2of the sky. These lensing measurements are derived from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) Data Release 6 (DR6) CMB data set, which consists of five seasons of ACT CMB temperature and polarization observations. We determine the amplitude of the CMB lensing power spectrum at 2.3% precision (43σsignificance) using a novel pipeline that minimizes sensitivity to foregrounds and to noise properties. To ensure that our results are robust, we analyze an extensive set of null tests, consistency tests, and systematic error estimates and employ a blinded analysis framework. Our CMB lensing power spectrum measurement provides constraints on the amplitude of cosmic structure that do not depend on Planck or galaxy survey data, thus giving independent information about large-scale structure growth and potential tensions in structure measurements. The baseline spectrum is well fit by a lensing amplitude ofAlens= 1.013 ± 0.023 relative to the Planck 2018 CMB power spectra best-fit ΛCDM model andAlens= 1.005 ± 0.023 relative to the ACT DR4 + WMAP best-fit model. From our lensing power spectrum measurement, we derive constraints on the parameter combinationS8CMBLσ8Ωm/0.30.25ofS8CMBL=0.818±0.022from ACT DR6 CMB lensing alone andS8CMBL=0.813±0.018when combining ACT DR6 and PlanckNPIPECMB lensing power spectra. These results are in excellent agreement with ΛCDM model constraints from Planck or ACT DR4 + WMAP CMB power spectrum measurements. Our lensing measurements from redshiftsz∼ 0.5–5 are thus fully consistent with ΛCDM structure growth predictions based on CMB anisotropies probing primarilyz∼ 1100. We find no evidence for a suppression of the amplitude of cosmic structure at low redshifts.

     
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  6. Abstract

    We present a beam pattern measurement of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) made using the Sun as a calibration source. As CHIME is a pure drift-scan instrument, we rely on the seasonal north–south motion of the Sun to probe the beam at different elevations. This semiannual range in elevation, combined with the radio brightness of the Sun, enables a beam measurement that spans ∼7200 square degrees on the sky without the need to move the telescope. We take advantage of observations made near solar minimum to minimize the impact of solar variability, which is observed to be <10% in intensity over the observation period. The resulting data set is highly complementary to other CHIME beam measurements—both in terms of angular coverage and systematics—and plays an important role in the ongoing program to characterize the CHIME primary beam.

     
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  7. Abstract

    The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is a drift scan radio telescope operating across the 400–800 MHz band. CHIME is located at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory near Penticton, BC, Canada. The instrument is designed to map neutral hydrogen over the redshift range 0.8–2.5 to constrain the expansion history of the universe. This goal drives the design features of the instrument. CHIME consists of four parallel cylindrical reflectors, oriented north–south, each 100 m × 20 m and outfitted with a 256-element dual-polarization linear feed array. CHIME observes a two-degree-wide stripe covering the entire meridian at any given moment, observing three-quarters of the sky every day owing to Earth’s rotation. An FX correlator utilizes field-programmable gate arrays and graphics processing units to digitize and correlate the signals, with different correlation products generated for cosmological, fast radio burst, pulsar, very long baseline interferometry, and 21 cm absorber back ends. For the cosmology back end, theNfeed2correlation matrix is formed for 1024 frequency channels across the band every 31 ms. A data receiver system applies calibration and flagging and, for our primary cosmological data product, stacks redundant baselines and integrates for 10 s. We present an overview of the instrument, its performance metrics based on the first 3 yr of science data, and we describe the current progress in characterizing CHIME’s primary beam response. We also present maps of the sky derived from CHIME data; we are using versions of these maps for a cosmological stacking analysis, as well as for investigation of Galactic foregrounds.

     
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