http://arxiv.org/abs/1803.00756
Observation of the 21 cm line signal from neutral hydrogen during the Epoch of Reionization is challenging due to extremely bright Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds and complicated instrumental calibration. A reasonable approach for mitigating these problems is the cross correlation with other observables. In this work, we present the first results of the cross power spectrum (CPS) between radio images observed by the Murchison Widefield Array and the cosmic microwave background (CMB), measured by the Planck experiment. The resulting CPS is consistent with zero because the error is dominated by the foregrounds in the 21 cm observation, and we obtain an upper limit ,$l^2C_l/2\pi<-3.1\times10^7 \rm \mu K^2$, at $l=100$ and at 171MHz. Additionally, the variance of the signal indicates the presence of non-Gaussian error at small scales. Furthermore, we reduce the error by one order of magnitude with application of a foreground removal using a polynomial fitting method. Based on the results, we find that the detection of the 21 cm-CMB CPS with the MWA Phase I requires more than 99.95% of the foreground signal removed, 2000 hours of deep observation and 50% of the sky fraction coverage.
S. Yoshiura, K. Ichiki, B. Pindor, et. al.
Mon, 5 Mar 18
30/45
Comments: 12 pages, 12 figures, submitted to MNRAS