Melis O. Irfan

Bio: Melis O. Irfan is an academic researcher from University of the Western Cape. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 13 citations. Previous affiliations of Melis O. Irfan include Paris Diderot University.

21-cm foregrounds and polarization leakage: cleaning and mitigation strategies

Abstract: The success of HI intensity mapping is largely dependent on how well 21cm foreground contamination can be controlled. In order to progress our understanding further, we present a range of simulated foreground data from four different $\sim3000$\,deg$^2$ sky regions, with and without effects from polarization leakage. Combining these with underlying cosmological HI simulations creates a range of single-dish intensity mapping test cases that require different foreground treatments. This allows us to conduct the most generalized study to date into 21cm foregrounds and their cleaning techniques for the post-reionization era. We first provide a pedagogical review of the most commonly used blind foreground removal techniques (PCA/SVD, FASTICA, GMCA). We also trial a non-blind parametric fitting technique and discuss potential hybridization of methods. We highlight the similarities and differences in these techniques finding that the blind methods produce near equivalent results, and we explain the fundamental reasons for this. The simulations allow an exact decomposition of the resulting cleaned data and we analyse the contribution from foreground residuals. Our results demonstrate that polarized foreground residuals should be generally subdominant to HI on small scales ($k\gtrsim0.1\,h\,\text{Mpc}^{-1}$). However, on larger scales, results are more region dependent. In some cases, aggressive cleans severely damp HI power but still leave dominant foreground residuals. We also demonstrate the gain from cross-correlations with optical galaxy surveys, where extreme levels of residual foregrounds can be circumvented. However, these residuals still contribute to errors and we discuss the optimal balance between over- and under-cleaning.

Unveiling the Universe with emerging cosmological probes

Abstract: Abstract The detection of the accelerated expansion of the Universe has been one of the major breakthroughs in modern cosmology. Several cosmological probes (Cosmic Microwave Background, Supernovae Type Ia, Baryon Acoustic Oscillations) have been studied in depth to better understand the nature of the mechanism driving this acceleration, and they are being currently pushed to their limits, obtaining remarkable constraints that allowed us to shape the standard cosmological model. In parallel to that, however, the percent precision achieved has recently revealed apparent tensions between measurements obtained from different methods. These are either indicating some unaccounted systematic effects, or are pointing toward new physics. Following the development of CMB, SNe, and BAO cosmology, it is critical to extend our selection of cosmological probes. Novel probes can be exploited to validate results, control or mitigate systematic effects, and, most importantly, to increase the accuracy and robustness of our results. This review is meant to provide a state-of-art benchmark of the latest advances in emerging “beyond-standard” cosmological probes. We present how several different methods can become a key resource for observational cosmology. In particular, we review cosmic chronometers, quasars, gamma-ray bursts, standard sirens, lensing time-delay with galaxies and clusters, cosmic voids, neutral hydrogen intensity mapping, surface brightness fluctuations, stellar ages of the oldest objects, secular redshift drift, and clustering of standard candles. The review describes the method, systematics, and results of each probe in a homogeneous way, giving the reader a clear picture of the available innovative methods that have been introduced in recent years and how to apply them. The review also discusses the potential synergies and complementarities between the various probes, exploring how they will contribute to the future of modern cosmology.

H i intensity mapping with MeerKAT: primary beam effects on foreground cleaning

Abstract: Upcoming and future neutral hydrogen Intensity Mapping surveys offer a great opportunity to constrain cosmology in the post-reionization Universe, provided a good accuracy is achieved in the separation between the strong foregrounds and the cosmological signal. Cleaning methods rely on the frequency smoothness of the foregrounds and are often applied under the assumption of a simplistic Gaussian primary beam. In this work, we test the cleaning in the presence of a realistic primary beam model with a non trivial frequency dependence. We focus on the Square Kilometre Array precursor MeerKAT telescope and simulate a single-dish wide area survey. We consider the main foreground components, including an accurate full sky point source catalogue. We find that the coupling between beam sidelobes and the foreground structure can complicate the cleaning. However, when the beam frequency dependence is smooth, we show that the cleaning is only problematic if the far sidelobes are unexpectedly large. Even in that case, a proper reconstruction is possible if the strongest point sources are removed and the cleaning is more aggressive. We then consider a non-trivial frequency dependence: a sinusoidal type feature in the beam width that is present in the MeerKAT beam and is expected in most dishes, including SKA1-MID. Such a feature, coupling with the foreground emission, biases the reconstruction of the signal across frequency, potentially impacting the cosmological analysis. Interestingly, such contamination is present at a lower level even when no point sources are included and the beam is Gaussian, showing that this frequency ripple can be problematic even within the main lobe. We show that this effect is constrained to a narrow region in $k_\parallel$ space and can be reduced if the maps are carefully re-smoothed to a common lower resolution.

Comparing foreground removal techniques for recovery of the LOFAR-EoR 21 cm power spectrum

Abstract: We compare various foreground removal techniques that are being utilised to remove bright foregrounds in various experiments aiming to detect the redshifted 21cm signal of neutral hydrogen from the Epoch of Reionization. In this work, we test the performance of removal techniques (FastICA, GMCA, and GPR) on 10 nights of LOFAR data and investigate the possibility of recovering the latest upper limit on the 21cm signal. Interestingly, we find that GMCA and FastICA reproduce the most recent 2σ upper limit of Δ221< (73)2 mK2 at k=0.075 hcMpc−1, which resulted from the application of GPR. We also find that FastICA and GMCA begin to deviate from the noise-limit at \textit{;k};-scales larger than ∼0.1 hcMpc−1. We then replicate the data via simulations to see the source of FastICA and GMCA's limitations, by testing them against various instrumental effects. We find that no single instrumental effect, such as primary beam effects or mode-mixing, can explain the poorer recovery by FastICA and GMCA at larger \textit{;k};-scales. We then test scale- independence of FastICA and GMCA, and find that lower \textit{;k};-scales can be modelled by a smaller number of independent components. For larger scales (k≳0.1 hcMpc−1), more independent components are needed to fit the foregrounds. We conclude that, the current usage of GPR by the LOFAR collaboration is the appropriate removal technique. It is both robust and less prone to overfitting, with future improvements to GPR's fitting optimisation to yield deeper limits.

H i intensity mapping with MeerKAT: Power spectrum detection in cross-correlation with WiggleZ galaxies

Abstract: We present a detection of correlated clustering between MeerKAT radio intensity maps and galaxies from the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey. We find a 7.7σ detection of the cross-correlation power spectrum, the amplitude of which is proportional to the product of the ${\rm H}\, \small {\rm I}$ density fraction ($\Omega _{{\rm H}\, \small {\rm I}}$), ${\rm H}\, \small {\rm I}$ bias ($b_{{\rm H}\, \small {\rm I}}$) and the cross-correlation coefficient (r). We therefore obtain the constraint $\Omega _{{\rm H}\, \small {\rm I}}b_{{\rm H}\, \small {\rm I}}r\, {=}\, [0.86\, {\pm }\, 0.10\, ({\rm stat})\, {\pm }\, 0.12\, ({\rm sys})]\, {\times }\, 10^{-3}$, at an effective scale of keff ∼ 0.13 h Mpc−1. The intensity maps were obtained from a pilot survey with the MeerKAT telescope, a 64-dish pathfinder array to the SKA Observatory (SKAO). The data were collected from 10.5 hours of observations using MeerKAT’s L-band receivers over six nights covering the 11hr field of WiggleZ, in the frequency range 1015–973 MHz (0.400 < z < 0.459 in redshift). This detection is the first practical demonstration of the multi-dish auto-correlation intensity mapping technique for cosmology. This marks an important milestone in the roadmap for the cosmology science case with the full SKAO.