An order of magnitude improvement: lessons from Australia on Epoch of Reionization analyses (Colloquium)

© Nicole Barry et al.

Radio interferometers are fast approaching detections of the 21 cm signal from the early universe. The latest Epoch of Reionization publication from the Murchison Widefield Array in Western Australia has entered a new regime of upper limit phase-space. Via a combination of new analysis techniques and improved quality metrics, we have improved previous MWA EoR limits by almost a factor of 10. I present the general lessons behind our findings, and discuss the future analysis challenges of the EoR-structure community. In particular, I will highlight how these lessons may apply to LOFAR, and the various efforts that are being undertaken to unite the knowledge base of the two communities.

The animated plot shows the most competitive current EoR limits. Both the most recent LOFAR limits (Mertens et al., in prep) and MWA limits (Barry et al. 2019) have improved upon their respective collaborations' previous best by almost an order of magnitude.