Testing Gravity with MeerKAT and the SKA
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Date
2020
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of the Western Cape
Abstract
The new 64-dish radio telescope array MeerKAT will be absorbed into the international
Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in late 2020s. These two telescope arrays will
produce three-dimensional maps of the integrated intensity of the 21cm emission
from neutral hydrogen in galaxies, out to redshifts of 1:5 and 3 respectively. These
maps contain a signature of the growth of large-scale structure in the Universe.
This signature can be uncovered via redshift space distortions of the two-point
correlation function, or power spectrum, of the 21cm brightness temperature
uctuations.
The growth rate governs the amplitude of the anisotropic signal from
redshift-space distortions. It is a powerful probe of gravity and its measurement
has the potential to test whether general relativity holds. We use models of the
21cm intensity and its power spectrum, starting from a simple linear model of
redshift-space distortions and then extending to nonlinear models. With these
models, we make Fisher forecast predictions of the precision with which MeerKAT
and the SKA can measure the growth rate
Description
>Magister Scientiae - MSc
Keywords
MeerKAT, South Africa, Telescope, Square Kilometre Array