Validation of the HERA Phase I Epoch of Reionization 21 cm Power Spectrum Software Pipeline
Creators: name: Aguirre, James E.
name: Murray, Steven G.
name: Pascua, Robert
name: Martinot, Zachary E.
name: Burba, Jacob
name: Dillon, Joshua S.
name: Jacobs, Daniel C.
name: Kern, Nicholas S.
name: Kittiwisit, Piyanat
name: Kolopanis, Matthew
name: Lanman, Adam
name: Liu, Adrian
name: Whitler, Lily
name: Abdurashidova, Zara
name: Alexander, Paul
name: Ali, Zaki S.
name: Balfour, Yanga
name: Beardsley, Adam P.
name: Bernardi, Gianni
name: Billings, Tashalee S.
name: Bowman, Judd D.
name: Bradley, Richard F.
name: Bull, Philip
name: Carey, Steve
name: Carilli, Chris L.
name: Cheng, Carina
name: DeBoer, David R.
name: Dexter, Matt
name: Acedo, Eloy de Lera
name: Ely, John
name: Ewall-Wice, Aaron
name: Fagnoni, Nicolas
name: Fritz, Randall
name: Furlanetto, Steven R.
name: Gale-Sides, Kingsley
name: Glendenning, Brian
name: Gorthi, Deepthi
name: Greig, Bradley
name: Grobbelaar, Jasper
name: Halday, Ziyaad
name: Hazelton, Bryna J.
name: Hewitt, Jacqueline N.
name: Hickish, Jack
name: Julius, Austin
name: Kerrigan, Joshua
name: Kohn, Saul A.
name: La Plante, Paul
name: Lekalake, Telalo
name: Lewis, David
name: MacMahon, David
name: Malan, Lourence
name: Malgas, Cresshim
name: Maree, Matthys
name: Matsetela, Eunice
name: Mesinger, Andrei
name: Molewa, Mathakane
name: Morales, Miguel F.
name: Mosiane, Tshegofalang
name: Neben, Abraham R.
name: Nikolic, Bojan
name: Parsons, Aaron R.
name: Patra, Nipanjana
name: Pieterse, Samantha
name: Pober, Jonathan C.
name: Razavi-Ghods, Nima
name: Ringuette, Jon
name: Robnett, James
name: Rosie, Kathryn
name: Santos, Mario G.
name: Sims, Peter
name: Singh, Saurabh
name: Smith, Craig
name: Syce, Angelo
name: Thyagarajan, Nithyanandan
name: Williams, Peter K. G.
name: Zheng, Haoxuan
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We describe the validation of the HERA Phase I software pipeline by a series of modular tests, building up to an end-to-end simulation. The philosophy of this approach is to validate the software and algorithms used in the Phase I upper limit analysis on wholly synthetic data satisfying the assumptions of that analysis, not addressing whether the actual data meet these assumptions. We discuss the organization of this validation approach, the specific modular tests performed, and the construction of the end-to-end simulations. We explicitly discuss the limitations in scope of the current simulation effort. With mock visibility data generated from a known analytic power spectrum and a wide range of realistic instrumental effects and foregrounds, we demonstrate that the current pipeline produces power spectrum estimates that are consistent with known analytic inputs to within thermal noise levels (at the 2 sigma level) for k &gt; 0.2 h/Mpc for both bands and fields considered. Our input spectrum is intentionally amplified to enable a strong `detection' at k ~0.2 h/Mpc -- at the level of ~25 sigma -- with foregrounds dominating on larger scales, and thermal noise dominating at smaller scales. Our pipeline is able to detect this amplified input signal after suppressing foregrounds with a dynamic range (foreground to noise ratio) of &gt; 10^7. Our validation test suite uncovered several sources of scale-independent signal loss throughout the pipeline, whose amplitude is well-characterized and accounted for in the final estimates. We conclude with a discussion of the steps required for the next round of data analysis.
description: 32 pages, 20 figures. Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal