11:00 am–12:00 pm ERC 401
Josh Dillon (University of California at Berkeley) "Recent Progress in 21 cm Cosmology with the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array"
21 cm cosmology promises a revolutionary new probe of the astrophysics and cosmology of the Cosmic Dawn and the epoch of reionization (EoR). I will discuss our progress with the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA), an interferometer in South Africa with 350 14-m dishes purpose-built for 21 cm cosmology. HERA recently published world-leading limits on the 21 cm power spectrum using only a small fraction of its final size and bandwidth. These results already have important astrophysical implications: they largely rule out "cold reionization" scenarios, provide a lower bound on the X-ray heating of the intergalactic medium, and constrain models of its origin. In this talk, I present these limits, their interpretation, and their statistical validation. Finally, I will discuss how this work is impacting ongoing observing and analysis of data from HERA's new broadband system (5 < z < 25) and what to expect in the next few years.
