Using negative detections to estimate source finder reliability

TL;DR

This paper introduces a straightforward approach to assess the reliability of source finders by analyzing positive and negative detections, especially useful for upcoming interferometric HI surveys.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel method leveraging negative detections to estimate the probability of real sources, improving source reliability assessment.

Findings

Negative detections effectively indicate false positives.

The method provides probabilistic reliability estimates for sources.

Applicable to large-scale HI surveys with symmetric noise.

Abstract

We describe a simple method to determine the reliability of source finders based on the detection of sources with both positive and negative total flux. Under the assumption that the noise is symmetric and that real sources have positive total flux, negative detections can be used to assign to each positive detection a probability of being real. We discuss this method in the context of upcoming, interferometric HI surveys.