English

Absolute Calibration of Diffuse Radio Surveys at 45 and 150 MHz

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-03-03 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

We use EDGES measurements to determine scale and zero-level corrections to the diffuse radio surveys by Guzm\'an et al. at 4545 MHz and Landecker & Wielebinski at 150150 MHz. We find that the Guzm\'an et al. map requires a scale correction of 1.076±0.0341.076 \pm 0.034 (2σ2\sigma) and a zero-level correction of 160±78-160 \pm 78 K (2σ2\sigma) to best-fit the EDGES data. For the Landecker & Wielebinski map, the scale correction is 1.112±0.0231.112 \pm 0.023 (2σ2\sigma) and the zero-level correction is 0.7±6.00.7 \pm 6.0 K (2σ2\sigma). The correction uncertainties are dominated by systematic effects, of which the most significant are uncertainty in the calibration of the EDGES receivers, antenna pointing, and tropospheric and ionospheric effects. We propagate the correction uncertainties to estimate the uncertainties in the corrected maps themselves and find that the 2σ2\sigma uncertainty in the map brightness temperature is in the range 3.27.5%3.2-7.5\% for the Guzm\'an et al. map and 2.19.0%2.1-9.0\% for the Landecker & Wielebinski map, with the largest percent uncertainties occurring at high Galactic latitudes. The corrected maps could be used to improve existing diffuse low-frequency radio sky models, which are essential tools in analyses of cosmological 2121 cm observations, as well as to investigate the existence of a radio monopole excess above the cosmic microwave background and known Galactic and extragalactic contributions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.11019,
  title  = {Absolute Calibration of Diffuse Radio Surveys at 45 and 150 MHz},
  author = {Raul A. Monsalve and Alan E. E. Rogers and Judd D. Bowman and Nivedita Mahesh and Steven G. Murray and Thomas J. Mozdzen and Leroy Johnson and John Barrett and Titu Samson and David Lewis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.11019},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in ApJ