The KATSKA project and Related Research

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The KAT/SKA project and Related Research
Catherine Cress (UKZN/KAT/UWC)
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The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope
for 2020 1000's of dishes spread over 1500km 1
km2 collecting area 0.1-22GHz? US1 billion 17
countries will be built in South Africa or
Australia SA demonstrator projects KAT,
meerKAT, BigKAT gt R800million committed Other
demonstrators xNTD, ATA, LOFAR, etc
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SKA Science Galaxy Evolution, Cosmology and
dark energy Reionisation epoch (time of
first stars and quasars) Pulsars, Black
Holes and Gravitational Waves SKA will find
large number of binary pulsar systems good
for testing GR in strong fields see effects
of QG? Planet Formation and SETI Cosmic
Magnetism www.ska.ac.za
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SKA layout and site
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Survey figure of merit Field-of-view(collecting
area/system temp)2bandwidth
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KAT Now first dish being made at Hartrao
gt20 Engineers at KAT office in Cape Town team of
8 in JHB Postgrad bursary program of over 25
students (engineering science)
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SKA/KAT-related research at UKZN(/UWC?)
Science for SKA eg. measuring sound speed of
dark energy (Torres-Rodriguez, Cress)
Clustering of HI-detected galaxies (Passmoor,
Cress) HI-studies with KAT z-distributions,
configurations etc. Radio Galaxy/optical
cross-correlations to measure bias
(relationship between dark and luminous matter)
(Nhanombe, Elbouchefry, Passmoor, Harpaul, Cress)
N-body simulations for galaxy evolution
studies (Bryan, Cress) Detecting background
of gravitational waves with pulsar array
(Moodley, Warne)
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SKA/KAT-related research at UKZN(/UWC?)-
Results Science for SKA eg. measuring sound
speed of dark energy dark energy sound speed
potentially distinguishable test quintessence
hypothesis Clustering of HI-detected
galaxies HI galaxies antibiased wrt DM
Radio Galaxy/optical cross-correlations
N-body simulations for galaxy
evolution coherent figure rotation over long
periods
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SKA/KAT-related research at UKZN(/UWC?) -
Results
HI observations with (meer)KAT
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HI observations with KAT M31 at z0.001 with
2km, 500m and 200m baselines Large
beams confusion, even in redshift space
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SKA/KAT related research at other institutions
see UCT talks pulsars, masers UJ, Wits,
UNISA, Hartrao Rhodes instrumentation,
masers with VLBI?
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Other research at UKZN (with Kavi Moodley and
students) Atacama Cosmology Telescope - SALT
observations - simulations to study cluster
identification with clustered point sources -
Blanco Cosmology Survey (deep optical, 50 sq deg
in south) - theory Spanish Planck
collaboration - simulations to study cluster
identification (with optical info) - SALT
observations? Galaxy Evolution simulations CMB
theory
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the KAT/SKA project viewed from just outside the
project team in 2005 in 2007
funding people development (see 2006 bursary
conference) site first dish production
strong international support SKADS etc.
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Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect Hot gas (107K) in
environment of clusters of galaxies. CMB photons
upscattered to higher frequencies by inverse
Compton effect (hot e-s give up energy to radio
photons gtin direction of clusters get hole in
CMB sky at radio ?s, bright patch at mm ?s.
Optical Xray
MBAC on ACT 1.7 beam w/ 2X noise
High-Res SZ Simulations
Planck (2008)
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Effect of varying w (in equation of state of dark
energy) on number density of clusters over a
given SZ detection threshold Top to bottom at
peak w -1, -0.6, -0.3, 0
Haiman et al (2001)