CAREER: Characterizing the First Billion Years of Galaxy Evolution with 21 cm Tomography

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The researcher will address a major question in Astronomy, understanding the first formation of galaxies. Our most distant vision of the universe comes from radio wavelength observations. Their plan is to implement critical components of the next generation radio telescope. This telescope will observe the heating of the gas between galaxies, which happened when the first stars in galaxies formed. These first stars in the first galaxies are too distant to be seen in optical light, but can be detected in radio waves. Because these first galaxies are seen from a great distance, the radio waves are found to be shifted to much lower frequencies, making these observations very difficult. The researcher will contribute to the study in two key ways: 1) investigating the effects of polarization calibration and foreground sources on power spectrum estimation and 2) developing the observational and analysis techniques to cross-correlate Epoch of Re-ionization data with other data sets. The critical goal is extracting cosmological information, and their approach is based on semi-analytic models of re-ionization galaxies.The primary broader impact activity is a novel one that goes beyond traditional efforts in this regime and was particularly well integrated with the research. They will convert an unused 10-m satellite dish into a community-use radio telescope in a high-poverty neighborhood, which will be used for high-school science projects. This includes involving students in the reconstruction of the dish. The students will use technology being developed for the experiment to detect the formation of galaxies.