Probing the first stars and black holes in the early Universe with the Dark Ages Radio Explorer (DARE)

By Judd D. Bowman, Alan E. E. Rogers, Jacqueline N. Hewitt. 2008

141 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract A concept for a new space-based cosmology mission called the Dark Ages Radio Explorer (DARE) is presented in this paper. DARE’s science objectives include: (1) When did the first stars form? (2) When did the first accreting black holes form? (3) When did Reionization begin? (4) What surprises does the end of the Dark Ages hold (e.g., Dark Matter decay)? DARE will use the highly-redshifted hyperfine 21-cm transition from neutral hydrogen to track the formation of the first luminous objects by their impact on the intergalactic medium during the end of the Dark Ages and during Cosmic Dawn (redshifts z = 11–35). It will measure the sky-averaged spin temperature of neutral hydrogen at the unexplored epoch 80–420 million years after the Big Bang, providing the first evidence of the earliest stars and galaxies to illuminate the cosmos and testing our models of galaxy formation. DARE’s approach is to measure the expected spectral features in the sky-averaged, redshifted 21-cm signal over a radio bandpass of 40–120 MHz. DARE orbits the Moon for a mission lifetime of 3 years and takes data above the lunar farside, the only location in the inner solar system proven to be free of human-generated radio frequency interference and any significant ionosphere. The science instrument is composed of a low frequency radiometer, including electrically-short, tapered, bi-conical dipole antennas, a receiver, and a digital spectrometer. The smooth frequency response of the antennas and the differential spectral calibration approach using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique will be applied to detect the weak cosmic 21-cm signal in the presence of the intense solar system and Galactic foreground emissions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e5e36349eb13190a46ba5f6c49cf4483409927b8

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Citations in the corpus

Reionization and the Cosmic Dawn with the Square Kilometre Array (2012, methodology): “…the Long Wavelength Array (LWA) in beam forming mode (Bowman priv. comm.), observations with the Large-aperture Experiment to detect the Dark Ages (LEDA, Greenhill & Bernardi 2012) and Dark Ages Radio Explorer (DARE, Burns et al. 2012; Harker et al. 2012) - a proposed single dipole space mission.”
Enhanced Global Signal of Neutral Hydrogen Due to Excess Radiation at Cosmic Dawn (2018, methodology): “A few ongoing projects including the Dark Ages Radio Experiment (DARE) (Burns et al. 2012), the Experiment to Detect the Reionization Step (EDGES) (Bowman & Rogers 2010), the Large-Aperture Experiment to Detect the Dark Ages (LEDA) (Greenhill & Bernardi 2012) and the Long Wavelength Array (LWA) (Hen”
Charting the parameter space of the global 21-cm signal (2016, background): “…Patra et al. 2013), the Large Aperture Experiment to Detect the Dark Age (LEDA, Bernardi et al. 2015) and the Dark Ages Radio Explorer (DARE, Burns et al. 2012), are trying to measure the global signal, while the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR, van Haarlem et al. 2013), the Murchison Wide-field…”
PAPER-64 CONSTRAINTS ON REIONIZATION: THE 21 cm POWER SPECTRUM AT z = 8.4 (2015, methodology): “So-called “global” experiments such as EDGES (Bowman & Rogers 2010), the LWA (Ellingson et al. 2013), LEDA (Greenhill & Bernardi 2012; Bernardi et al. 2015), DARE (Burns et al. 2012), SciHi (Voytek et al. 2014), BigHorns (Sokolowski et al. 2015), and SARAS (Patra et al. 2015) seek to measure the mea”
Fundamental physics with the Square Kilometre Array (2018, methodology): “Experiments targeting the global signal include EDGES (Bowman et al., 2008), SARAS (Patra et al., 2013), LEDA2, SCI-HI (Voytek et al., 2014), and a proposed lunar experiment DARE (Burns et al., 2012).”
COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND CONSTRAINTS ON THE DURATION AND TIMING OF REIONIZATION FROM THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE (2011, unknown): “Our results are good news for upcoming experiments that hope to detect a redshifted 21 cm absorption feature sourced by substantial UV coupling prior to Xray heating during the onset of reionization (Pritchard & Loeb 2010; Bowman et al. 2008b,a; Burns et al. 2012; Harker et al. 2012).”