No Arabic abstract
Diffuse Galactic emission at low frequencies is a major contaminant for studies of redshifted $21$ cm line studies. Removal of these foregrounds is essential for exploiting the signal from neutral hydrogen at high redshifts. Analysis of foregrounds and its characteristics is thus of utmost importance. It is customary to test efficacy of foreground removal techniques using simulated foregrounds. Most simulations assume that the distribution of the foreground signal is a Gaussian random field. In this work we test this assumption by computing the binned bispectrum for the all-sky $408$ MHz map. This is done by applying different brightness temperature ($T$) thresholds in order to assess whether the cooler parts of the sky have different characteristics. We find that regions with a low brightness temperature $T < 25$ K indeed have smaller departures from a Gaussian distribution. Therefore, these regions of the sky are ideal for future H{sc i} intensity mapping surveys.
We present an improved Global Sky Model (GSM) of diffuse galactic radio emission from 10 MHz to 5 THz, whose uses include foreground modeling for CMB and 21 cm cosmology. Our model improves on past work both algorithmically and by adding new data sets such as the Planck maps and the enhanced Haslam map. Our method generalizes the Principal Component Analysis approach to handle non-overlapping regions, enabling the inclusion of 29 sky maps with no region of the sky common to all. We also perform a blind separation of our GSM into physical components with a method that makes no assumptions about physical emission mechanisms (synchrotron, free-free, dust, etc). Remarkably, this blind method automatically finds five components that have previously only been found by hand, which we identify with synchrotron, free-free, cold dust, warm dust, and the CMB anisotropy, with maps and spectra agreeing with previous work but in many cases with smaller error bars. The improved GSM is available online at github.com/jeffzhen/gsm2016.
We present a new 408 MHz survey (B3.1) carried out with the Croce del Nord radiotelescope in Bologna. The survey coordinates limits are $-2^circ 00^prime$ to $+2^circ 15^prime$ in Dec. and 21h to 24h, 00h to 17h in R.A., equivalent to 0.388 sr. The B3.1 is complete to 0.15 Jy but many sources down to 0.1 Jy are included. Our aim was to select a new and complete sample of Ultra Steep Spectrum (USS) radio sources, as they proved to be good candidates to find high-z radiogalaxies and their surrounding protoclusters. The observations and the reduction procedure are described and the observational errors are discussed. A cross-identification with the NVSS survey was performed to obtain the spectral index $alpha_{408}^{1400}$ and radio size of the sources. We found no evidence of a change of the spectral index distribution as radio flux decreases. The B3.1 USS sample contains 185 sources down to 0.1 Jy and it is about one order of magnitude deeper in flux with respect to the 4C USS sample. For 146 B3.1 USS sources no optical counterpart was found on the POSS-I sky survey. A cross-correlation with the FIRST survey gave maps for a subset of 50 USS sources, and their optical ID search was also made on the POSS-II, resulting in 39 empty fields
Dark matter annihilations in the Galactic halo inject relativistic electrons and positrons which in turn generate a synchrotron radiation when interacting with the galactic magnetic field. We calculate the synchrotron flux for various dark matter annihilation channels, masses, and astrophysical assumptions in the low-frequency range and compare our results with radio surveys from 22 MHz to 1420 MHz. We find that current observations are able to constrain particle dark matter with thermal annihilation cross-sections, i.e. (sigma v) = 3 x 10^-26 cm^3/s, and masses M_DM < 10 GeV. We discuss the dependence of these bounds on the astrophysical assumptions, namely galactic dark matter distribution, cosmic rays propagation parameters, and structure of the galactic magnetic field. Prospects for detection in future radio surveys are outlined.
We detect and characterise extended, diffuse radio emission from galaxy clusters at 168 MHz within the Epoch of Reionization 0-hour field: a $45^circ times 45^circ$ region of the southern sky centred on R.~A.${}= 0^circ$, decl.${}=-27^circ$. We detect 29 sources of interest; a newly detected halo in Abell 0141; a newly detected relic in Abell 2751; 4 new halo candidates and a further 4 new relic candidates; and a new phoenix candidate in Abell 2556. Additionally, we find 9 clusters with unclassifiable, diffuse steep-spectrum emission as well as a candidate double relic system associated with RXC J2351.0-1934. We present measured source properties such as their integrated flux densities, spectral indices ($alpha$, where $S_ u propto u^alpha$), and sizes where possible. We find several of the diffuse sources to have ultra-steep spectra including the halo in Abell 0141, if confirmed, showing $alpha leq -2.1 pm 0.1$ with the present data making it one of the steepest-spectrum haloes known. Finally, we compare our sample of haloes with previously detected haloes and revisit established scaling relations of the radio halo power ($P_{1.4}$) with the cluster X-ray luminosity ($L_{mathrm{X}}$) and mass ($M_{500}$). We find that the newly detected haloes and candidate haloes are consistent with the $P_{1.4}$-$L_{mathrm{X}}$ and $P_{1.4}$-$M_{500}$ relations, and see an increase in scatter in the previously found relations with increasing sample size likely caused by inhomogeneous determination of $P_{1.4}$ across the full halo sample. We show that the MWA is capable of detecting haloes and relics within most of the galaxy clusters within the Planck catalogue of Sunyaev-Zeldovich sources depending on exact halo or relic properties.
We present a broadband map of polarized diffuse emission at 167-198 MHz developed from data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA). The map is designed to improve visibility simulation and precision calibration for 21 cm Epoch of Reionization (EoR) experiments. It covers a large swath - 11,000 sq. deg. - of the Southern Hemisphere sky in all four Stokes parameters and captures emission on angular scales of 1 to 9 degrees. The band-averaged diffuse structure is predominantly unpolarized but has significant linearly polarized structure near RA = 0 h. We evaluate the accuracy of the map by combining it with the GLEAM catalog and simulating an observation from the MWA, demonstrating that the accuracy of the short baselines (6.1-50 wavelengths) now approaches the accuracy of the longer baselines typically used for EoR calibration. We discuss how to use the map for visibility simulation for a variety of interferometric arrays. The map has potential to improve calibration accuracy for experiments such as the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) and the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA) as well as the MWA.