The BINGO telescope: a new instrument exploring the new 21-cm cosmology window

TL;DR

BINGO is a novel radio telescope designed to detect Baryon Acoustic Oscillations through intensity mapping of neutral hydrogen, aiding cosmological studies and serving as a pathfinder for the SKA project.

Contribution

The paper introduces the design, construction status, and preliminary results of the BINGO telescope, a new instrument for 21-cm cosmology and BAO detection.

Findings

Telescope design with low sidelobe levels achieved

Initial instrumentation development underway

Potential to detect BAO at radio frequencies

Abstract

BINGO is a unique radio telescope designed to make the first detection of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) at radio frequencies. This will be achieved by measuring the distribution of neutral hydrogen gas at cosmological distances using a technique called Intensity Mapping. Along with the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies, the scale of BAO is one of the most powerful probes of cosmological parameters, including dark energy. The telescope will be built in a very low RFI site in South America and will operate in the frequency range from 0.96 GHz to 1.26 GHz. The telescope design consists of two $\thicksim$ 40-m compact mirrors with no moving parts. Such a design will give the excellent polarization performance and very low sidelobe levels required for intensity mapping. With a feedhorn array of 50 receivers, it will map a $15^{\circ}$ declination strip as the sky drifts past the field-of-view of the telescope. The BINGO consortium is composed Universidade de S\~ao Paulo, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Brazil), University of Manchester and University College London (United Kingdom), ETH Z\"urich (Switzerland) and Universidad de La Republica (Uruguay). The telescope assembly and horn design and fabrication are under way in Brazil. The receiver was designed in UK and will be developed in Brazil, with most of the components for the receiver will also be supplied by Brazilian industry. The experience and science goals achieved by the BINGO team will be advantageous as a pathfinder mission for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project. This paper reports the current status of the BINGO mission, as well as preliminary results already obtained for the instrumentation development.