Wednesday - September 28, 2022 

4:00pm-5:15pm EDT - PPPL AUDITORIUM AND VIA ZOOM

Hosted by Frank Hoffman

Professor Kavilan Moodley
University of Kwazulu-Natal, Professor, Astrophysics Research Centre

Dark Energy With HIRAX 21cm Intensity Mapping


Observations of redshifted 21-cm emission of neutral hydrogen over a wide range of radio frequencies allow us to access redshifts that encompass a vast comoving volume, including the era of dark energy. In this talk, I will present the Hydrogen Intensity Mapping and Real time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX) project, which is a proposed 21cm intensity mapping experiment operating at 400-800 MHz that will measure the evolution of dark energy over the redshift range z=0.8-2.5 by using the characteristic baryonic acoustic oscillation scale as a standard ruler. The HIRAX radio telescope array will be sited in the radio-quiet Karoo astronomy reserve in South Africa and will ultimately comprise 1024 dishes, each six metres in diameter, placed in a compact configuration. I will discuss the design and project status of HIRAX, its scientific prospects and engineering challenges. This includes dark energy forecasts as well as prospects for interesting cosmological constraints from cross-correlations of HIRAX data with other large-area cosmological surveys in the southern sky. HIRAX will also discover a large number of pulsars and transients, including fast radio bursts (FRBs). I will describe our programme to localise these FRBs using HIRAX outriggers in African partner countries.

To join via Zoom: 
https://pppl.zoom.us/j/361549769?pwd=R0d5d0hFUjZJNnBhRGR0RkszOGM1UT09
Meeting ID: 361 549 769
Passcode: colloquium