Observations of the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization with the SKAO: Observational Lessons Learned from Precursors and Pathfinder Instruments
Eloy de Lera Acedo, James Aguirre, Dominic Anstey, Nichole Barry, Gianni Bernardi, Somnath Bharadwaj, Anthony Brown, Jean Cavillot, Suman Chatterjee, Samir Choudhuri, Tyler Cox, John Cumner, Abhirup Datta, Fred Dulwich, Khandakar Md Asif Elahi, Andrew Faulkner, Sukhdeep Singh Gill, Quentin Gueuning, Daniel C. Jacobs, Nicholas Kern, Piyanat Kittiwisit, Yuchen Liu, Zachary Martinot, Ashish Mhaske, Florent Mertens, Vincent McKay, Satyapan Munshi, Steven Murray, Chuneeta D. Nunhokee, Oscar Sage David O'Hara, Samit K. Pal, Robert Pascua, Rashmi Sagar, Shouvik Sarkar, Shiv Sethi, Sarod Yatawatta, Oskar Zetterstrom
astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.CO
Submitted: 2026-06-24
Comments: Published in Advancing Astrophysics with the SKAII (AASKAII), 2026(arXiv:2606.20366).Report-no:AASKAII/deLeraAcedo01. Advancing Astrophysics with the SKAII (AASKAII) outlines the transformative scientific advances that will be enabled by the SKA telescopes
Code: https://github.com/zacharymartinot/redshifted_gaussian_fields
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
The gist: This chapter summarizes the observational lessons learned after two decades of observations of the Cosmic Dawn (CD) and Epoch of Reionization (EoR) with SKAO pathfinders and precursors.
Terminology
Abstract
This chapter summarizes the observational lessons learned after two decades of observations of the Cosmic Dawn (CD) and Epoch of Reionization (EoR) with SKAO pathfinders and precursors. We will describe the effort towards building accurate simulation pipelines for actual observations and summarize the approaches that different groups have taken to calibrate and mitigate systematic effects such as sky model incompleteness, limited instrument models and antenna mutual coupling. We conclude by discussing the impact that these lessons may have on the design and analysis of upcoming SKAO observations of the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization.
Sources
- Mitigating gain calibration errors from EoR observations with SKA1-Low AA*
- First upper limits on the 21-cm signal power spectrum of neutral hydrogen at $z=9.16$ from the LOFAR 3C196 field
- fftvis: A Non-Uniform Fast Fourier Transform Based Interferometric Visibility Simulator
- SKA1-LOW Antenna Design Document
- SKALA, a log-periodic array antenna for the SKA-low instrument: design, simulations, tests and system considerations
- SKA LFAA Station Design Report
- A Visibility-based 21 cm Bispectrum Estimator for Radio-interferometric Data
- Mitigating incoherent excess variance in high-redshift 21 cm observations with multi-output cross-Gaussian process regression
- Uncovering the Effects of Array Mutual Coupling in 21-cm Experiments with the SKA-Low Radio Telescope
- ELAIS-N1 deep field uGMRT Band-2: constraints on diffuse Galactic synchrotron emission power spectrum
- Unintended electromagnetic radiation from Starlink satellites detected with LOFAR between 110 and 188 MHz
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