Dallas Wulf

Observations with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) have been used to measure the 21 cm intensity mapping autopower spectrum, at z ∼ 1, over a frequency range from 608.2 to 707.8 MHz at wavenumbers 0.4 h Mpc ⁻¹ ≲ k ≲ 1.5 h Mpc ⁻¹ . In this paper, we present the results of two different approaches to interpreting this measurement. In the first approach, we use a parametric power spectrum model to constrain an amplitude parameter, defined as A HI 2 ≡ 1 0 6 Ω HI 2 ( b HI 2 + 〈 f μ 2 〉 ) 2 , where Ω _HI is the cosmological density parameter for atomic hydrogen (H I ), b _HI is the linear bias for H I , and 〈 fμ ² 〉 incorporates the dominant large-scale impact of redshift-space distortions on the angle-averaged power spectrum. Imposing an additional prior on either Ω _HI or b _HI , based on values in the literature, allows us to break the pairwise degeneracy between those two parameters. In the second approach, we compare CHIME’s measurement with predictions for the power spectrum of H I from the IllustrisTNG simulations, finding that the measurement disagrees with the TNG100 run at 3.1 σ and the TNG300 run at 4.0 σ . The disagreement is likely attributable to the effects of nonlinear H I clustering and redshift-space distortions in the simulations, rather than the total abundance of H I , and invites further investigation of the physical processes in the simulations that determine the behavior of H I at nonlinear scales. These results exemplify the ability of 21 cm intensity mapping to provide astrophysical information using measurements at nonlinear scales.

We present the first detection of the cosmological 21 cm intensity mapping signal in autocorrelation at z ∼ 1 with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). Using 94 nights of observation, we have measured the 21 cm auto power spectrum over a frequency range of 608.2–707.8 MHz ( z = 1.34–1.01) at 0.4 h Mpc ⁻¹ ≲ k ≲ 1.5 h Mpc ⁻¹ , with a detection significance of 12.4 σ . Our analysis employs significant improvements to the CHIME data processing pipeline compared to previous work, including novel radio frequency interference detection and masking algorithms, achromatic beamforming techniques, and foreground filtering before time averaging to minimize spectral leakage. We establish the robustness and reliability of our detection through a comprehensive suite of validation tests. We also measure the 21 cm signal in two independent sub-bands centered at z ∼ 1.08 and z ∼ 1.24 with detection significance of 8.6 σ and 9.1 σ , respectively. We briefly discuss the theoretical interpretation of these measurements in terms of a power spectrum model, deferring the details to a companion paper. This auto power spectrum detection demonstrates CHIME’s capability to probe large-scale structure through 21 cm intensity mapping without reliance on external galaxy surveys.

Line intensity mapping using atomic hydrogen (H I ) has the potential to efficiently map large volumes of the Universe if the signal can be successfully separated from overwhelmingly bright radio foreground emission. This motivates cross correlations, to ascertain the cosmological nature of measured H I fluctuations, and to study their connections with galaxies and the underlying matter density field. However, these same foregrounds render the cross correlation with projected fields such as the lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) difficult. Indeed, the correlated Fourier modes vary slowly along the line of sight and are thus most contaminated by the smooth-spectrum radio continuum foregrounds. In this paper, we implement a method that avoids this issue by attempting to measure the nonlinear gravitational coupling of the small-scale 21 cm power from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) with large-scale Planck CMB lensing. This measurement is a position-dependent power spectrum, i.e., a squeezed integrated bispectrum. Using 94 nights of CHIME data between 1.0 < z < 1.3 and aggressive foreground filtering, we find that the expected signal is 5 times smaller than the current noise. We forecast that incorporating the additional nights of CHIME data already collected would enable a signal-to-noise ratio of 3, without any further improvements in filtering for foreground cleaning.

We present a catalog of 4539 fast radio bursts (FRBs) observed with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment telescope between 2018 July 25 and 2023 September 15. These bursts originate from 3641 unique sources, including 981 bursts from 83 known repeating sources. For each FRB, the catalog provides an O ( 1 0 ′ ) estimate of sky location along with corresponding measurements of cumulative exposure time and survey sensitivity over the observing period. It includes a total-intensity dynamic spectrum between 400 and 800 MHz at 0.983 ms resolution. From this spectrum, we constrain a model of the burst morphology and measure key parameters such as arrival time, intrinsic temporal width, dispersion measure, scattering time, and flux density. This second catalog includes all FRBs from the first catalog, with every event reprocessed using a uniform and improved analysis framework. We show that previously published inferences remain valid under the updated measurements. We assess consistency of the detection rate across observational parameters, present initial distributions of burst properties, and outline ongoing and future studies that will use this catalog to investigate the nature of FRBs and their utility as astrophysical and cosmological probes.

We report the detection of a new 21 cm absorption system associated with the radio source NVSS J164725 + 375218 at a redshift of z = 2.327, identified through a pilot survey conducted by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). This is the fifth detection of an associated system at z > 2. By analyzing a subset of available data, we conduct a spectrally blind survey for 21 cm absorption systems within the redshift range of 0.78–2.55 along 202 lines of sight toward known sources in the declination range of 35° to 60°. We detect three 21 cm absorbers: two previously known intervening systems and one newly discovered associated system. By fitting the absorption profiles with models containing one to three Gaussian components and selecting the best model using the Bayesian information criterion, we estimate the optical depth, velocity-integrated optical depth, and the ratio between the H i column density and the spin temperature of the absorption systems. These results demonstrate CHIME’s ability to discover new absorbers, even in a small subset of its full dataset.

This paper presents a low-noise amplifier (LNA) that was developed for a new radio telescope comprised of 512 parabolic dish antennas. The LNA closely interfaces to a custom-made antenna feed with an impedance co-designed to provide noise matching over a 5:1 bandwidth. Additionally, a method of broadband noise and power matching that allows the input impedance to be controlled independently from the optimum signal-source impedance to achieve minimum noise is also discussed. When measured in a 50-Ωsystem, the LNA exhibits a return loss (RL) of > 8 dB between 0.32 to 1.5 GHz, S21 of 32 dB \pm 1.2 dB, IP1dB > -37 dBm, and IIP3 > -20 dBm. Noise parameter measurements show Tmin \approx 13 \pm 4K and noise temperatures T50Ω \approx 18 \pm 6K between 0.5 to 1.4 GHz.

We present the first catalog of fast radio burst (FRB) host galaxies from CHIME/FRB Outriggers, selected uniformly in the radio and the optical by localizing 81 new bursts to 2″ × ∼ 60″ accuracy using CHIME and the k’niʔatn k’l ⌣ stk’masqt Outrigger station, located 66 km from CHIME. Of the 81 localized bursts, we use the probabilistic association of transients to their hosts algorithm to securely identify 21 new FRB host galaxies, and compile spectroscopic redshifts for 19 systems, 15 of which are newly obtained via spectroscopic observations. The most nearby source is FRB 20231229A, at a distance of 90 Mpc. One burst in our sample is from a previously reported repeating source in a galaxy merger (FRB 20190303A). Three new FRB host galaxies (FRBs 20230203A, 20230703A, and 20231206A) are found toward X-ray and optically selected galaxy clusters, potentially doubling the sample of known galaxy cluster FRBs. A search for radio counterparts reveals that FRB 20231128A is associated with a luminous persistent radio source (PRS) candidate with high significance (P _cc ∼ 10⁻²). If its compactness is confirmed, it would be the nearest known compact PRS at z = 0.1079. Our catalog significantly increases the statistics of the Macquart relation at low redshifts (z < 0.2). In the near future, the completed CHIME/FRB Outriggers array will produce hundreds of FRBs localized with very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). This will significantly expand the known sample and pave the way for future telescopes relying on VLBI for FRB localization.

We present beam measurements of the CHIME telescope using a radio calibration source deployed on a drone payload. During test flights, the pulsing calibration source and the telescope were synchronized to GPS time, enabling in-situ background subtraction for the full $N^{2}$ visibility matrix for one CHIME cylindrical reflector. We use the autocorrelation products to estimate the primary beam width and centroid location, and compare these quantities to solar transit measurements and holographic measurements where they overlap on the sky. We find that the drone, solar, and holography data have similar beam parameter evolution across frequency and both spatial coordinates. This paper presents the first drone-based beam measurement of a large cylindrical radio interferometer. Furthermore, the unique analysis and instrumentation described in this paper lays the foundation for near-field measurements of experiments like CHIME.

We present the first results of the holographic beam-mapping program for the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). We describe the implementation of a holographic technique as adapted for CHIME, and introduce the processing pipeline which prepares the raw holographic timestreams for analysis of beam features. We use data from six bright sources across the full 400–800 MHz observing band of CHIME to provide measurements of the copolar and cross-polar beam response in both amplitude and phase for all 1024 dual-polarized feeds in the array. In addition, we present comparisons with independent probes of the CHIME beam, which indicate the presence of polarized beam leakage. Holographic measurements of the beam have already been applied in science with CHIME, e.g., in estimating the detection significance of far-sidelobe fast radio bursts, and in validating the beam models used for CHIME’s first detections of 21 cm emission (in cross-correlation with measurements of large-scale structure from galaxy surveys and the Lyα forest). Measurements presented in this paper, and future holographic results, will provide a unique data set to characterize the CHIME beam and improve the experiment’s prospects for a detection of the baryon acoustic oscillation signal.