Line-intensity mapping with the CO mapping array pathfinder and beyond - Chung, Dongwoo Tom; Church, Sarah Elizabeth; Kuo, Chao-Lin; Wechsler, Risa H. (Risa Heyrman); Stanford University, Department of Physics ([Stanford, California] : [Stanford University], 2020)
Line-intensity mapping (LIM) is a relatively novel technique that, similar to studies of the cosmic infrared background radiation, uses spatial-spectral fluctuations in spectral line emission as proxy for faint and bright star-forming galaxies in the first several billion years of cosmic history. LIM surveys have strong scientific motivation in open questions about the history of cosmic reionisation and subsequent star-formation activity, and will be strongly complementary to space-based galaxy surveys through JWST and WFIRST. The CO Mapping Array Pathfinder (COMAP) is a blind CO intensity survey directly targeting redshift ~ 3 that will study the galaxy population at this redshift in aggregate. The present thesis reflects both experimental and theoretical work done in the course of the development of COMAP. This work ranges from test observations to isolate and characterise standing waves in the system, to forecasting foregrounds, cross-correlations, and line-of-sight anisotropies. The final part of this thesis also looks beyond COMAP, considering [C II] intensity mappers directly targeting the cosmic epoch of reionisation, and making signal and sensitivity forecasts for these surveys
Submitted to the Department of Physics
Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020
Rights: (c) Copyright 2020 by Dongwoo Tom Chung
Rights: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Keywords: theses; text