Spectral calibration requirements of radio interferometers for Epoch of Reionisation science with the SKA

TL;DR

This paper investigates how instrumental spectral calibration affects Epoch of Reionisation science with the SKA, providing calibration tolerances and strategies to optimize data quality for statistical and tomographic analyses.

Contribution

It offers new calibration requirements and strategies for SKA1-Low to minimize spectral residuals impacting EoR observations.

Findings

Fourth-order polynomial bandpass residuals must be <2.5% for 50 MHz channels.

Phase residuals should not exceed 0.2 degrees across fine channels.

Calibration strategies influence sensitivity and residual power in EoR experiments.

Abstract

Spectral features introduced by instrumental chromaticity of radio interferometers have the potential to negatively impact the ability to perform Epoch of Reionisation (EoR) and Cosmic Dawn (CD) science using the redshifted neutral hydrogen emission line from the early Universe. We describe instrument calibration choices that influence the spectral characteristics of the science data, and assess their impact on EoR statistical and tomographic experiments. Principally, we consider the intrinsic spectral response of the receiving antennas, embedded within a complete frequency-dependent primary beam response, and frequency-dependent instrument sampling. We assess different options for bandpass calibration. The analysis is applied to the proposed SKA1-Low EoR/CD experiments. We provide tolerances on the smoothness of the SKA station primary beam bandpass, to meet the scientific goals of statistical and tomographic (imaging) EoR programs. Two calibration strategies are tested: (1) fitting of each fine channel independently, and (2) fitting of an nth-order polynomial for each ~1~MHz coarse channel with (n+1)th-order residuals (n=2,3,4). Strategy (1) leads to uncorrelated power in the 2D power spectrum proportional to the thermal noise power, thereby reducing the overall array sensitivity. Strategy (2) leads to correlated residuals from the fitting, and residual signal power with (n+1)th-order curvature. For the residual power to be less than the thermal noise, the fractional amplitude of a fourth-order term in the bandpass across a single coarse channel must be <2.5% (50~MHz), <0.5% (150~MHz), <0.8% (200~MHz). The tomographic experiment places stringent constraints on phase residuals in the bandpass. We find that the root-mean-square variability over all stations of the change in phase across any fine channel (4.578~kHz) should not exceed 0.2 degrees.