Mapping our Universe in 3D with MITEoR

TL;DR

This paper introduces MITEoR, a low-cost, scalable 3D universe mapping instrument using redundant baseline calibration, demonstrating promising results for future large-scale cosmological surveys like HERA.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel low-cost interferometer design that leverages baseline redundancy for automated calibration and reduced computational complexity.

Findings

Successfully operated with 64 antennas, demonstrating effective calibration.

Validated the scalability of the technology for larger arrays like HERA.

Showed potential for cost-effective, large-volume 3D cosmological mapping.

Abstract

Mapping our universe in 3D by imaging the redshifted 21 cm line from neutral hydrogen has the potential to overtake the cosmic microwave background as our most powerful cosmological probe, because it can map a much larger volume of our Universe, shedding new light on the epoch of reionization, inflation, dark matter, dark energy, and neutrino masses. We report on MITEoR, a pathfinder low-frequency radio interferometer whose goal is to test technologies that greatly reduce the cost of such 3D mapping for a given sensitivity. MITEoR accomplishes this by using massive baseline redundancy both to enable automated precision calibration and to cut the correlator cost scaling from N^2 to NlogN, where N is the number of antennas. The success of MITEoR with its 64 dual-polarization elements bodes well for the more ambitious HERA project, which would incorporate many identical or similar technologies using an order of magnitude more antennas, each with dramatically larger collecting area.