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  1. ABSTRACT

    Quasars at redshifts z > 6 are an excellent probe of the formation and evolution of supermassive black holes in the early Universe. The population of radio-luminous quasars is of particular interest, as such quasars could potentially be used to study the neutral intergalactic medium during cosmic reionization via H i 21 cm absorption studies. However, the lack of deep radio observations of z > 6 quasars leaves the population poorly constrained, and suitable candidates for an H i 21 cm absorption study have yet to be found. In this work, we present Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) 1–2 GHz radio continuum observations of 138 quasars at redshifts 6.0 ≤ z < 7.6. We detect the radio continuum emission of the z = 6.1 quasar J1034−1425, with a 1.6 GHz flux density of $170\pm 36\, \mu$Jy. This quasar is radio-quiet with radio-loudness, R ≡ f5 GHz/fν, 4400 Å = 2.4 ± 0.5. In addition, we detect seven other quasars at z > 6, which have previously been characterized in the literature at these frequencies. Using the full sample, we estimate the radio-loud fraction to be $3.8^{+6.2}_{-2.4}\ \hbox{per cent}$, where the uncertainties are 95 per cent confidence intervals. This is lower than recent estimates of the radio-loud fraction in the literature, but is still marginally consistent with no redshift evolution of the radio-loud fraction. We explore the undetected quasar population by stacking their continuum images at their optical positions and obtain a median stacked flux density of 13.8 ± 3.9 µJy and luminosity of log L5 GHz/(W Hz−1) = 24.2 ± 0.1.

     
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  2. ABSTRACT

    Next-generation aperture arrays are expected to consist of hundreds to thousands of antenna elements with substantial digital signal processing to handle large operating bandwidths of a few tens to hundreds of MHz. Conventionally, FX correlators are used as the primary signal processing unit of the interferometer. These correlators have computational costs that scale as $\mathcal {O}(N^2)$ for large arrays. An alternative imaging approach is implemented in the E-field Parallel Imaging Correlator (EPIC) that was recently deployed on the Long Wavelength Array station at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (LWA-SV) in New Mexico. EPIC uses a novel architecture that produces electric field or intensity images of the sky at the angular resolution of the array with full or partial polarization and the full spectral resolution of the channelizer. By eliminating the intermediate cross-correlation data products, the computational costs can be significantly lowered in comparison to a conventional FX or XF correlator from $\mathcal {O}(N^2)$ to $\mathcal {O}(N \log N)$ for dense (but otherwise arbitrary) array layouts. EPIC can also lower the output data rates by directly yielding polarimetric image products for science analysis. We have optimized EPIC and have now commissioned it at LWA-SV as a commensal all-sky imaging back-end that can potentially detect and localize sources of impulsive radio emission on millisecond timescales. In this article, we review the architecture of EPIC, describe code optimizations that improve performance, and present initial validations from commissioning observations. Comparisons between EPIC measurements and simultaneous beam-formed observations of bright sources show spectral-temporal structures in good agreement.

     
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  3. ABSTRACT The recent demonstration of a real-time direct imaging radio interferometry correlator represents a new capability in radio astronomy. However, wide-field imaging with this method is challenging since wide-field effects and array non-coplanarity degrade image quality if not compensated for. Here, we present an alternative direct imaging correlation strategy using a direct Fourier transform (DFT), modelled as a linear operator facilitating a matrix multiplication between the DFT matrix and a vector of the electric fields from each antenna. This offers perfect correction for wide field and non-coplanarity effects. When implemented with data from the Long Wavelength Array (LWA), it offers comparable computational performance to previously demonstrated direct imaging techniques, despite having a theoretically higher floating point cost. It also has additional benefits, such as imaging sparse arrays and control over which sky coordinates are imaged, allowing variable pixel placement across an image. It is in practice a highly flexible and efficient method of direct radio imaging when implemented on suitable arrays. A functioning electric field direct imaging architecture using the DFT is presented, alongside an exploration of techniques for wide-field imaging similar to those in visibility-based imaging, and an explanation of why they do not fit well to imaging directly with the digitized electric field data. The DFT imaging method is demonstrated on real data from the LWA telescope, alongside a detailed performance analysis, as well as an exploration of its applicability to other arrays. 
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  4. ABSTRACT

    To mitigate the effects of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) on the data analysis pipelines of 21 cm interferometric instruments, numerous inpaint techniques have been developed. In this paper, we examine the qualitative and quantitative errors introduced into the visibilities and power spectrum due to inpainting. We perform our analysis on simulated data as well as real data from the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) Phase 1 upper limits. We also introduce a convolutional neural network that is capable of inpainting RFI corrupted data. We train our network on simulated data and show that our network is capable of inpainting real data without requiring to be retrained. We find that techniques that incorporate high wavenumbers in delay space in their modelling are best suited for inpainting over narrowband RFI. We show that with our fiducial parameters discrete prolate spheroidal sequences (dpss) and clean provide the best performance for intermittent RFI while Gaussian progress regression (gpr) and least squares spectral analysis (lssa) provide the best performance for larger RFI gaps. However, we caution that these qualitative conclusions are sensitive to the chosen hyperparameters of each inpainting technique. We show that all inpainting techniques reliably reproduce foreground dominated modes in the power spectrum. Since the inpainting techniques should not be capable of reproducing noise realizations, we find that the largest errors occur in the noise dominated delay modes. We show that as the noise level of the data comes down, clean and dpss are most capable of reproducing the fine frequency structure in the visibilities.

     
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  5. ABSTRACT

    Combining the visibilities measured by an interferometer to form a cosmological power spectrum is a complicated process. In a delay-based analysis, the mapping between instrumental and cosmological space is not a one-to-one relation. Instead, neighbouring modes contribute to the power measured at one point, with their respective contributions encoded in the window functions. To better understand the power measured by an interferometer, we assess the impact of instrument characteristics and analysis choices on these window functions. Focusing on the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) as a case study, we find that long-baseline observations correspond to enhanced low-k tails of the window functions, which facilitate foreground leakage, whilst an informed choice of bandwidth and frequency taper can reduce said tails. With simple test cases and realistic simulations, we show that, apart from tracing mode mixing, the window functions help accurately reconstruct the power spectrum estimator of simulated visibilities. The window functions depend strongly on the beam chromaticity and less on its spatial structure – a Gaussian approximation, ignoring side lobes, is sufficient. Finally, we investigate the potential of asymmetric window functions, down-weighting the contribution of low-k power to avoid foreground leakage. The window functions presented here correspond to the latest HERA upper limits for the full Phase I data. They allow an accurate reconstruction of the power spectrum measured by the instrument and will be used in future analyses to confront theoretical models and data directly in cylindrical space.

     
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  6. ABSTRACT

    Radio interferometers aiming to measure the power spectrum of the redshifted 21 cm line during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) need to achieve an unprecedented dynamic range to separate the weak signal from overwhelming foreground emissions. Calibration inaccuracies can compromise the sensitivity of these measurements to the effect that a detection of the EoR is precluded. An alternative to standard analysis techniques makes use of the closure phase, which allows one to bypass antenna-based direction-independent calibration. Similarly to standard approaches, we use a delay spectrum technique to search for the EoR signal. Using 94 nights of data observed with Phase I of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA), we place approximate constraints on the 21 cm power spectrum at z = 7.7. We find at 95 per cent confidence that the 21 cm EoR brightness temperature is ≤(372)2 ‘pseudo’ mK2 at 1.14 ‘pseudo’ h Mpc−1, where the ‘pseudo’ emphasizes that these limits are to be interpreted as approximations to the actual distance scales and brightness temperatures. Using a fiducial EoR model, we demonstrate the feasibility of detecting the EoR with the full array. Compared to standard methods, the closure phase processing is relatively simple, thereby providing an important independent check on results derived using visibility intensities, or related.

     
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  7. ABSTRACT

    We present a Bayesian jackknife test for assessing the probability that a data set contains biased subsets, and, if so, which of the subsets are likely to be biased. The test can be used to assess the presence and likely source of statistical tension between different measurements of the same quantities in an automated manner. Under certain broadly applicable assumptions, the test is analytically tractable. We also provide an open-source code, chiborg, that performs both analytic and numerical computations of the test on general Gaussian-distributed data. After exploring the information theoretical aspects of the test and its performance with an array of simulations, we apply it to data from the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) to assess whether different sub-seasons of observing can justifiably be combined to produce a deeper 21 cm power spectrum upper limit. We find that, with a handful of exceptions, the HERA data in question are statistically consistent and this decision is justified. We conclude by pointing out the wide applicability of this test, including to CMB experiments and the H0 tension.

     
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