Detecting cosmological reionization on large scales through the 21 cm HI line

Abstract

This thesis presents the development of new techniques for measuring the mean redshifted 21 cm line of neutral hydrogen during reionization. This is called the 21 cm cosmological reionization monopole. Successful observations could identify the nature of the first stars and test theories of galaxy and large-scale structure formation. The goal was to specify, construct and calibrate a portable radio telescope to measure the 21 cm monopole in the frequency range 114 MHz to 228 MHz, which corresponds to the redshift range 11.5 > z > 5.2. The chosen approach combined a frequency independent antenna with a digital correlation spectrometer to form a correlation radiometer. The system was calibrated against injected noise and against a modelled galactic foreground. Components were specified for calibration of the sky spectrum to 1 mK/MHz relative accuracy. Comparing simulated and measured spectra showed that bandpass calibration is limited to 11 K, that is 1% of the foreground emission, due to larger than expected frequency dependence of the antenna pattern. Overall calibration, including additive contributions from the system and the radio foreground, is limited to 60 K. This is 160 times larger than the maximum possible monopole amplitude at redshift eight. Future work will refine and extend the system known as the Cosmological Reionization Experiment Mark I (CoRE Mk I).