The Tianlai Cylinder Pathfinder Array: System Functions and Basic Performance Analysis

Li, Jixia; Zuo, Shifan; Wu, Fengquan; Wang, Yougang; Zhang, Juyong; Sun, Shijie; Xu, Yidong; Yu, Zijie; Ansari, Reza; Li, Yichao; Stebbins, Albert; Timbie, Peter; Cong, Yanping; Geng, Jingchao; Hao, Jie; Huang, Qizhi; Li, Jianbin; Li, Rui; Liu, Donghao; Liu, Yingfeng; Liu, Tao; Marriner, John P.; Niu, Chenhui; Pen, Ue-Li; Peterson, Jeffery B.; Shi, Huli; Shu, Lin; Song, Yafang; Tian, Haijun; Wang, Guisong; Wang, Qunxiong; Wang, Rongli; Wang, Weixia; Yu, Kaifeng; Zhang, Jiao; Zhu, Boqin; Zhu, Jialu; Chen, Xuelei

doi:10.48550/arxiv.2006.05605

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The Tianlai cylinder pathfinder array is described in detail in Li et al (2020). Here, we shall give a brief summary of the instrument.…”

Section: The Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reflections and Standing Waves on the Tianlai Cylinder Array

Li,

Wu,

Sun

et al. 2020

Preprint

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In 21 cm intensity mapping, the spectral smoothness of the foreground is exploited to separate it from the much weaker 21 cm signal. However, the non-smooth frequency response of the instrument complicates this process. Reflections and standing waves generate modulations on the frequency response. Here we report the analysis of the standing waves in the bandpass of the signal channels of the Tianlai Cylinder Array. By Fourier transforming the bandpass into the delay time domain, we find various standing waves generated on the telescope. A standing wave with time delay at ∼142 ns is most clearly identified which is produced in the 15-meter feed cable. We also find a strong peak at a shorter delay of τ < 50 ns, which may be a mix of the standing wave between the reflector and feed, and the standing wave on the 4 m intermediate frequency (IF) cable. We also show that a smoother frequency response could be partially recovered by removing the reflection-inducted modulations. However, the standing wave on the antenna is direction-dependent, which poses a more difficult challenge for high precision calibration.

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“…The Tianlai cylinder pathfinder array is described in detail in Li et al (2020). Here, we shall give a brief summary of the instrument.…”

Section: The Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If successful, the experiment can be expanded to larger scale, and the full scale experiment could provide measurement of the dark energy equation of state parameters and constrain inflationary features (Xu et al 2015(Xu et al , 2016. The two arrays had their first light observation in 2016 (Das et al 2018;Li et al 2020;Wu 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflections and Standing Waves on the Tianlai Cylinder Array

Li,

Wu,

Sun

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…While HI intensity mapping is being used out to a redshift of ∼ 50 to study the EoR and Cosmic Dawn by a variety of instruments, including LOFAR (van Haarlem et al 2013), MWA (Tingay et al 2013), HERA (DeBoer et al 2017), PA-PER (Parsons et al 2010), and LWA (Eastwood et al 2018), this paper focuses on measurements of the post-reionization epoch. Several dedicated instruments have been constructed, or are under development, to detect the 21 cm signal from this epoch using intensity mapping, ultimately without the need for cross-correlation with other surveys: Tianlai (Chen 2012;Das et al 2018;Li et al 2020), CHIME (Bandura et al 2014), HIRAX (Newburgh et al 2016), BINGO (Battye et al 2016) and OWFA (Chatterjee & Bharadwaj 2018). Other instruments being designed and built to test the technique include BMX (Castorina et al 2020) and PAON-4 (Zhang et al 2016b;Ansari et al 2020).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The whole system except filters has been designed to operate over a wide range of frequencies (400-1500 MHz). The low noise amplifiers (LNAs) are designed to have low noise temperature (about 47 K at room temperature (Li et al 2020)) and are mounted to the back of the feed antennas. The amplified RF signals pass through 15-meter long coaxial cables to optical transmitters mounted under the dish antennas.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Tianlai Dish Pathfinder Array: design, operation and performance of a prototype transit radio interferometer

Wu,

Li,

Zuo

et al. 2020

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The Tianlai Dish Pathfinder Array is a radio interferometer designed to test techniques for 21 cm intensity mapping in the post-reionization universe as a means for measuring large-scale cosmic structure. It performs drift scans of the sky at constant declination. We describe the design, calibration, noise level, and stability of this instrument based on 6,200 hours of on-sky observations through October, 2019. Combining all the baselines we make maps around bright sources and show that the array behaves as expected. Analysis of long integrations on the North Celestial Pole yielded visibilities with amplitudes of 20-30 mK, consistent with the expected signal from the NCP radio sky with < 10 mK precision for 1MHz × 1min binning. Hi-pass filtering the spectra to remove smooth spectrum signal yields a residual consistent with zero signal at the 0.5 mK level.

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The Tianlai Cylinder Pathfinder Array: System Functions and Basic Performance Analysis

Cited by 2 publications

References 26 publications

Reflections and Standing Waves on the Tianlai Cylinder Array

Reflections and Standing Waves on the Tianlai Cylinder Array

The Tianlai Dish Pathfinder Array: design, operation and performance of a prototype transit radio interferometer

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