The FRB-searching Pipeline of the Tianlai Cylinder Pathfinder Array

This paper presents the design,calibration,and survey strategy of the Fast Radio Burst(FRB)digital backend and its real-time data processing pipeline employed in the Tianlai Cylinder Pathfinder Array.The array,consisting of three parallel cylindrical reflectors and equipped with 96 dual-polarization feeds,is a radio interferometer array designed for conducting drift scans of the northern celestial semi-sphere.The FRB digital backend enables the formation of 96 digital beams,effectively covering an area of approximately 40 square degrees with the 3 dB beam.Our pipeline demonstrates the capability to conduct an automatic search of FRBs,detecting at quasi-realtime and classifying FRB candidates automatically.The current FRB searching pipeline has an overall recall rate of88%.During the commissioning phase,we successfully detected signals emitted by four well-known pulsars:PSR B0329+54,B2021+51,B0823+26,and B2020+28.We report the first discovery of an FRB by our array,designated as FRB 20220414A.We also investigate the optimal arrangement for the digitally formed beams to achieve maximum detection rate by numerical simulation.

Application of Regularization Methods in the Sky Map Reconstruction of the Tianlai Cylinder Pathfinder Array

The Tianlai cylinder pathfinder is a radio interferometer array to test 21 cm intensity mapping techniques in the post-reionization era.It works in passive drift scan mode to survey the sky visible in the northern hemisphere.To deal with the large instantaneous field of view and the spherical sky,we decompose the drift scan data into m-modes,which are linearly related to the sky intensity.The sky map is reconstructed by solving the linear interferometer equations.Due to incomplete uv coverage of the interferometer baselines,this inverse problem is usually ill-posed,and regularization method is needed for its solution.In this paper,we use simulation to investigate two frequently used regularization methods,the Truncated Singular Value Decomposition(TSVD),and the Tikhonov regularization techniques.Choosing the regularization parameter is very important for its application.We employ the generalized cross validation method and the L-curve method to determine the optimal value.We compare the resulting maps obtained with the different regularization methods,and for the different parameters derived using the different criteria.While both methods can yield good maps for a range of regularization parameters,in the Tikhonov method the suppression of noisy modes are more gradually applied,produce more smooth maps which avoids some visual artefacts in the maps generated with the TSVD method.

Implications of the Stellar Mass Density of High-z Massive Galaxies from JWST on Warm Dark Matter

A significant excess of the stellar mass density at high redshift has been discovered from the early data release of James Webb Space Telescope(JWST),and it may require a high star formation efficiency.However,this will lead to large number density of ionizing photons in the epoch of reionization(EoR),so that the reionization history will be changed,which can arise tension with the current EoR observations.Warm dark matter(WDM),via the free streaming effect,can suppress the formation of small-scale structure as well as low-mass galaxies.This provides an effective way to decrease the ionizing photons when considering a large star formation efficiency in high-z massive galaxies without altering the cosmic reionization history.On the other hand,the constraints on the properties of WDM can be derived from the JWST observations.In this work,we study WDM as a possible solution to reconcile the JWST stellar mass density of high-z massive galaxies and reionization history.We find that,the JWST high-z comoving cumulative stellar mass density alone has no significant preference for either CDM or WDM model.But using the observational data of other stellar mass density measurements and reionization history,we obtain that the WDM particle mass with mw=0.51_(-0.12)^(+0.22) keV and star formation efficiency parameter f_(*)^(0)> 0.39 in 2σ confidence level can match both the JWST high-z comoving cumulative stellar mass density and the reionization history.

The FAST Core Array

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope(FAST)Core Array is a proposed extension of FAST,integrating 24 secondary 40-m antennas implanted within 5 km of the FAST site.This original array design will combine the unprecedented sensitivity of FAST with a high angular resolution(4.3"at a frequency of 1.4 GHz),thereby exceeding the capabilities at similar frequencies of next-generation arrays such as the Square Kilometre Array Phase 1 or the next-generation Very Large Array.This article presents the technical specifications of the FAST Core Array,evaluates its potential relatively to existing radio telescope arrays,and describes its expected scientific prospects.The proposed array will be equipped with technologically advanced backend devices,such as real-time signal processing systems.A phased array feed receiver will be mounted on FAST to improve the survey efficiency of the FAST Core Array,whose broad frequency coverage and large field of view(FOV)will be essential to study transient cosmic phenomena such as fast radio bursts and gravitational wave events,to conduct surveys and resolve structures in neutral hydrogen galaxies,to monitor or detect pulsars,and to investigate exoplanetary systems.Finally,the FAST Core Array can strengthen China's major role in the global radio astronomy community,owing to a wide range of potential scientific applications from cosmology to exoplanet science.

The electrical design of a membrane antenna for a lunar-based low-frequency radio telescope

Detecting primordial fluctuations from the cosmic dark ages requires extremely large low-frequency radio telescope arrays deployed on the far side of the Moon.The antenna of such an array must be lightweight,easily storable and transportable,deployable on a large scale,durable,and capable of good electrical performance.A membrane antenna is an excellent candidate to meet these criteria.We study the design of a low-frequency membrane antenna for a lunar-based low-frequency(<30 MHz)radio telescope constructed from polyimide film widely used in aerospace applications,owing to its excellent dielectric properties and high stability as a substrate material.We first design and optimize an antenna in free space through dipole deformation and coupling principles,then simulate an antenna on the lunar surface with a simple lunar soil model,yielding an efficiency greater than 90%in the range of 12-19 MHz and greater than 10%in the range of 5-35 MHz.The antenna inherits the omni-directional radiation pattern of a simple dipole antenna in the 5-30 MHz frequency band,giving a large field of view and allowing detection of the 21 cm global signal when used alone.A demonstration prototype is constructed,and its measured electrical property is found to be consistent with simulated results using|S11|measurements.This membrane antenna can potentially fulfill the requirements of a lunar low-frequency array,establishing a solid technical foundation for future large-scale arrays for exploring the cosmic dark ages.

Detecting HI Galaxies with Deep Neural Networks in the Presence of Radio Frequency Interference

In the neutral hydrogen(H I)galaxy survey,a significant challenge is to identify and extract the H I galaxy signal from the observational data contaminated by radio frequency interference(RFI).For a drift-scan survey,or more generally a survey of a spatially continuous region,in the time-ordered spectral data,the H I galaxies and RFI all appear as regions that extend an area in the time-frequency waterfall plot,so the extraction of the H I galaxies and RFI from such data can be regarded as an image segmentation problem,and machine-learning methods can be applied to solve such problems.In this study,we develop a method to effectively detect and extract signals of H I galaxies based on a Mask R-CNN network combined with the PointRend method.By simulating FAST-observed galaxy signals and potential RFI impact,we created a realistic data set for the training and testing of our neural network.We compared five different architectures and selected the best-performing one.This architecture successfully performs instance segmentation of H I galaxy signals in the RFI-contaminated time-ordered data,achieving a precision of 98.64%and a recall of 93.59%.

Extracting 21 cm signal by frequency and angular filtering

Extracting the neutral hydrogen （HI） signal is a great challenge for cosmological 21 cm experiments; both the astrophysical foregrounds and receiver noise are typically several orders of magnitude greater than the 21 cm signal. However, the different properties of the 21 cm signal, foreground and noise can be exploited to separate these components. The foregrounds are generally smooth or correlated over the frequency space along a line of sight （LOS）, while both the 21 cm signal and noise vary stochastically along the same LoS. The foreground can be removed by filtering out the smooth component in frequency space. The receiver noise is basically uncorrelated for observations at different times, hence for surveys it is also uncorrelated in different directions, while the 21 cm signal, which traces the large scale structure, is correlated up to certain scales. In this exercise, we apply Wiener filters in frequency and angular space to extract the 21 cm signals. We found that the method works well. Inaccurate knowl- edge about the beam could degrade the reconstruction, but the overall result is still good, showing that the method is fairly robust.

Reflections and standing waves on the Tianlai cylinder array

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 identify a strong peak at a shorter delay ofτ<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.

Sky reconstruction for the Tianlai cylinder array

We apply our sky map reconstruction method for transit type interferometers to the Tianlai cylin- der array. The method is based on spherical harmonic decomposition, and can be applied to a cylindrical array as well as dish arrays and we can compute the instrument response, synthesized beam, transfer func- tion and noise power spectrum. We consider cylinder arrays with feed spacing larger than half a wavelength and, as expected, we find that the arrays with regular spacing have grating lobes which produce spurious images in the reconstructed maps. We show that this problem can be overcome using arrays with a different feed spacing on each cylinder. We present the reconstructed maps, and study the performance in terms of noise power spectrum, transfer function and beams for both regular and irregular feed spacing configura- tions.

The Electromagnetic Characteristics of the Tianlai Cylindrical Pathfinder Array

A great challenge for 21 cm intensity mapping experiments is the strong foreground radiation which is orders of magnitude brighter than the 21 cm signal.Removal of the foreground takes advantage of the fact that its frequency spectrum is smooth while the redshifted 21 cm signal spectrum is stochastic.However,a complication is the nonsmoothness of the instrument response.This paper describes the electromagnetic simulation of the Tianlai cylinder array,a pathfinder for 21 cm intensity mapping experiments.Due to the vast scales involved,a direct simulation requires a large amount of computing resources.We have made the simulation practical by using a combination of methods:first simulate a single feed,then an array of feed units,finally with the feed array and a cylindrical reflector together,obtain the response for a single cylinder.We studied its radiation pattern,bandpass response and the effects of mutual coupling between feed units,and compared the results with observation.Many features seen in the measurement result are reproduced well in the simulation,especially the oscillatory features which are associated with the standing waves on the reflector.The mutual coupling between feed units is quantified with Sparameters,which decrease as the distance between the two feeds increases.Based on the simulated S-parameters,we estimate the correlated noise which has been seen in the visibility data,and the results show very good agreement with the data in both magnitude and frequency structures.These results provide useful insights on the problem of 21 cm signal extraction for real instruments.

Classifying Globular Clusters and Applying them to Estimate the mass of the Milky Way

We combine the kinematics of 159 globular clusters(GCs) provided by the Gaia Early Data Release 3(EDR3) with other observational data to classify the GCs,and to estimate the mass of the Milky Way(MW).We use the agemetallicity relation,integrals of motion,action space and the GC orbits to identify the GCs as either formed in situ(Bulge and Disk) or ex situ(via accretion).We find that 45.3% have formed in situ,while 38.4% may be related to known merger events:Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus,the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy,the Helmi streams,the Sequoia galaxy and the Kraken galaxy.We also further identify three new sub-structures associated with the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus.The remaining 16.3% of GCs are unrelated to the known mergers and thought to be from small accretion events.We select 46 GCs which have radii 8.0 <r<37.3 kpc and obtain the anisotropy parameter β=0.315_(-0.049)^(+0.055),which is lower than the recent result using the sample of GCs in Gaia Data Release 2,but still in agreement with it by considering the error bar.By using the same sample,we obtain the MW mass inside the outermost GC as M(<37.3 kpc)=0.423_(-0.02)^(+0.02)×10^(12)M_(⊙),and the corresponding M_(200)=1.11_(-0.18)^(+0.25)×10^(12)M_(⊙).The estimated mass is consistent with the results in many recent studies.We also find that the estimated β and mass depend on the selected sample of GCs.However,it is difficult to determine whether a GC fully traces the potential of the MW.

A Simulation of Calibration and Map-making Errors of the Tianlai Cylinder Pathfinder Array

The Tianlai cylinder array is a pathfinder for developing and testing 21 cm intensity mapping techniques.In this paper,we use numerical simulation to assess how its measurement is affected by thermal noise and the errors in calibration and map-making process,and the error in the sky map reconstructed from a drift scan survey.Here we consider only the single frequency,unpolarized case.The beam is modeled by fitting to the electromagnetic simulation of the antenna,and the variations of the complex gains of the array elements are modeled by Gaussian processes.Mock visibility data are generated and run through our data processing pipeline.We find that the accuracy of the current calibration is limited primarily by the absolute calibration,where the error comes mainly from the approximation of a single dominating point source.We then studied the m-mode map-making with the help of Moore-Penrose inverse.We find that discarding modes with singular values smaller than a threshold could generate visible artifacts in the map.The impacts of the residue variation of the complex gain and thermal noise are also investigated.The thermal noise in the map varies with latitude,being minimum at the latitude passing through the zenith of the telescope.The angular power spectrum of the reconstructed map show that the current Tianlai cylinder pathfinder,which has a shorter maximum baseline length in the North-South direction,can measure modes up to l■2πb_(NS)/λ~200 very well,but would lose a significant fraction of higher angular modes when noise is present.These results help us to identify the main limiting factors in our current array configuration and data analysis procedure,and suggest that the performance can be improved by reconfiguration of the array feed positions.

A Fast Radio Burst Backend for the Tianlai Dish Pathfinder Array

The Tianlai Dish Pathfinder Array is a radio interferometer array consisting of 16 six-meter dish antennas.The original digital backend integration time is at the seconds level,designed for H I intensity mapping experiment.A new digital backend with millisecond response is added to enable it to search for fast radio burst during its observations.The design and calibration of this backend,and the real time search pipeline for it are described in this paper.It is capable of forming 16 digital beams for each linear polarization,covering an area of 19.6 square degrees.The search pipeline is capable of searching for,recording and classifying FRBs automatically in real time.In commissioning,we succeeded in capturing the signal pulses from the pulsars PSR B0329+54 and B2021+51.

FRB 171019:an event of binary neutron star merger?

The fast radio burst,FRB 171019,was relatively bright when discovered first by ASKAP but was identified as a repeater with three faint bursts detected later by GBT and CHIME.These observations lead to the discussion of whether the first bright burst shares the same mechanism with the following repeating bursts.A model of binary neutron star merger is proposed for FRB 171019,in which the first bright burst occurred during the merger event,while the subsequent repeating bursts are starquake-induced,and generally fainter,as the energy release rate for the starquakes can hardly exceed that of the catastrophic merger event.This scenario is consistent with the observation that no later burst detected is as bright as the first one.

TeV cosmic-ray proton and helium spectra in the myriad model Ⅱ

Recent observations show that the spectra of cosmic ray nuclei start to harden above ～ 102 GeV, which contradicts the conventional steady-state cosmic ray model. We had suggested that this anomaly is due to the propagation effect of cosmic rays released from local young cosmic ray sources; the total flux of cosmic rays should be computed with the Myriad Model, where a contribution from sources in the local catalog is added to the background. However, although the hardening could be elegantly explained in this model, the model parameters obtained from the fit are skewed toward a region with fast diffusion and a low supernova rate in the Galaxy, in disagreement with other observations. We further explore this model in order to set up a concordant picture. Two possible improvements related to cosmic ray sources are considered. First, instead of the usual axisymmetric disk model, we examine a spiral model for the source distribution. Second, for nearby and young sources which are necessary to explain the hardening, we allow for an energy-dependent escape. We find that a major improvement comes from incorporating an energy-dependent escape time for local sources, and with both modifications not only are the cosmic ray proton and helium anomalies resolved, but also the parameters attain values in a reasonable range compatible with other analyses.

Cosmological constraints on ultra-light axion fields

Ultra-light axions(ULAs)with mass less than 10-20 eV have interesting behaviors that may contribute to either dark energy or dark matter at different epochs of the Universe.Their properties can be explored by cosmological observations,such as expansion history of the Universe,cosmic large-scale structure,cosmic microwave background,etc.In this work,we study the ULAs with mass around 10-33 eV,which means that the ULA field still rolls slowly at present with the equation of state w=-1 as dark energy.To investigate the mass and other properties of this kind of ULA field,we adopt the measurements of Type Ia supernova(SN Ia),baryon acoustic oscillation(BAO),and Hubble parameter H(z).The Markov Chain Monte Carlo(MCMC)technique is employed to perform the constraints on the parameters.Finally,by exploring four cases of the model,we find that the mass of this ULA field is about 3×10-33 eV if assuming the initial axion fieldφi=Mpl.We also investigate a general case by assumingφi≤Mpl,and find that the fitting results ofφi/Mpl are consistent with or close to 1 for the datasets that we use.

The optical/UV excess of X-ray-dim isolated neutron star Ⅱ.Nonuniformity of plasma on a strangeon star surface

Several X-ray-dim isolated neutron stars （XDINSs）, also known as the Magnificent Seven, exhibit a Planck-like soft X-ray spectrum. In the optical/ultraviolet （UV） band, there is an excess of radiation compared to an extrapolation from the X-ray spectrum. However, the majority exhibits ＂spec- tral deviations＂： the fact that there is more flux at longer wavelengths makes spectra deviate from the Rayleigh-Jeans law. A model of bremsstrahlung emission from a nonuniform plasma atmosphere is proposed in the regime of a strangeon star to explain the optical/UV excess and its spectral devi- ation as well as X-ray pulsation. The atmosphere is on the surface of strangeon matter, which has negligible emission, and is formed by the accretion of ISM-fed debris disk matter moving along the magnetic field lines to near the polar caps. These particles may spread out of the polar regions which makes the atmosphere non-uniform. The modeled electron temperatures are ~ 100 - 200 eV with radi- ation radii Ropt ~ 5 - 14km. The spectra of five sources （RX J0720.4-3125, RX J0806.4-4123, RX J1308.6＋2127, RX J1605.3＋3249, RX J1856.5-3754） from optical/UV to X-ray bands can be fitted well by the radiative model, and exhibit Gaussian absorption lines at ~ 100 - 500 eV as would be expected. Furthermore, the surroundings （i.e., fallback disks or dusty belts） of XDINSs could be tested by future infrared/submillimeter observations.

Cross-correlation Forecast of CSST Spectroscopic Galaxy and MeerKAT Neutral Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Surveys

Cross-correlating the data on neutral hydrogen(HⅠ)21 cm intensity mapping with galaxy surveys is an effective method to extract astrophysical and cosmological information.In this work,we investigate the cross-correlation of MeerKAT single-dish mode HⅠintensity mapping and China Space Station Telescope(CSST)spectroscopic galaxy surveys.We simulate a survey area of~300 deg~2 of MeerKAT and CSST surveys at z=0.5 using MultiDark N-body simulation.The PC A algorithm is applied to remove the foregrounds of HⅠintensity mapping,and signal compensation is considered to solve the signal loss problem in HⅠ-galaxy cross power spectrum caused by the foreground removal process.We find that from CSST galaxy auto and MeerKAT-CSST cross power spectra,the constraint accuracy of the parameter productΩ_(HⅠ)b_(HⅠ)r_(HⅠ,g)can reach~1%,which is about one order of magnitude higher than the current results.After performing the full MeerKAT HⅠintensity mapping survey with5000 deg~2 survey area,the accuracy can be enhanced to<0.3%.This implies that the MeerKAT-CSST cross-correlation can be a powerful tool to probe the cosmic HⅠproperty and the evolution of galaxies and the Universe.

Photometric Redshift Estimates using Bayesian Neural Networks in the CSST Survey

Galaxy photometric redshift(photoz)is crucial in cosmological studies,such as weak gravitational lensing and galaxy angular clustering measurements.In this work,we try to extract photoz information and construct its probability distribution function(PDF)using the Bayesian neural networks from both galaxy flux and image data expected to be obtained by the China Space Station Telescope(CSST).The mock galaxy images are generated from the Hubble Space Telescope-Advanced Camera for Surveys(HST-ACS)and COSMOS catalogs,in which the CSST instrumental effects are carefully considered.In addition,the galaxy flux data are measured from galaxy images using aperture photometry.We construct a Bayesian multilayer perceptron(B-MLP)and Bayesian convolutional neural network(B-CNN)to predict photoz along with the PDFs from fluxes and images,respectively.We combine the B-MLP and B-CNN together,and construct a hybrid network and employ the transfer learning techniques to investigate the improvement of including both flux and image data.For galaxy samples with signal-to-noise ratio(SNR)>10 in g or i band,we find the accuracy and outlier fraction of photoz can achieve σ_(NMAD)=0.022 and η=2.35% for the B-MLP using flux data only,and σ_(NMAD)=0.022 and η=1.32% for the B-CNN using image data only.The Bayesian hybrid network can achieve σ_(NMAD)=0.021 and η=1.23%,and utilizing transfer learning technique can improve results to σ_(NMAD)=0.019 and η=1.17%,which can provide the most confident predictions with the lowest average uncertainty.

Cosmological neutrino simulations at extreme scale

Constraining neutrino mass remains an elusive challenge in modern physics.Precision measurements are expected from several upcoming cosmological probes of large-scale structure.Achieving this goal relies on an equal level of precision from theoretical predictions of neutrino clustering.Numerical simulations of the non-linear evolution of cold dark matter and neutrinos play a pivotal role in this process.We incorporate neutrinos into the cosmological N-body code CUBEP3M and discuss the challenges associated with pushing to the extreme scales demanded by the neutrino problem.We highlight code optimizations made to exploit modern high performance computing architectures and present a novel method of data compression that reduces the phase-space particle footprint from 24 bytes in single precision to roughly 9 bytes.We scale the neutrino problem to the Tianhe-2 supercomputer and provide details of our production run,named Tian Nu,which uses 86%of the machine(13 824 compute nodes).With a total of 2.97 trillion particles,Tian Nu is currently the world’s largest cosmological N-body simulation and improves upon previous neutrino simulations by two orders of magnitude in scale.We finish with a discussion of the unanticipated computational challenges that were encountered during the Tian Nu runtime.