<tt>matvis</tt>: a matrix-based visibility simulator for fast forward modelling of many-element 21 cm arrays

ABSTRACT Detection of the faint 21 cm line emission from the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization will require not only exquisite control over instrumental calibration and systematics to achieve the necessary dynamic range of observations but also validation of analysis techniques to demonstrate their statistical properties and signal loss characteristics. A key ingredient in achieving this is the ability to perform high-fidelity simulations of the kinds of data that are produced by the large, many-element, radio interferometric arrays that have been purpose-built for these studies. The large scale of these arrays presents a computational challenge, as one must simulate a detailed sky and instrumental model across many hundreds of frequency channels, thousands of time samples, and tens of thousands of baselines for arrays with hundreds of antennas. In this paper, we present a fast matrix-based method for simulating radio interferometric measurements (visibilities) at the necessary scale. We achieve this through judicious use of primary beam interpolation, fast approximations for coordinate transforms, and a vectorized outer product to expand per-antenna quantities to per-baseline visibilities, coupled with standard parallelization techniques. We validate the results of this method, implemented in the publicly available matvis code, against a high-precision reference simulator, and explore its computational scaling on a variety of problems.

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Publication Details

Journal
RAS Techniques and Instruments
Published
2025-01-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/rasti/rzaf001
Citations
8
Primary Topic
Antenna Design and Optimization
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
39.95

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article

<tt>matvis</tt>: a matrix-based visibility simulator for fast forward modelling of many-element 21 cm arrays

Bradley Marero, Eloy de Lera Acedo, Hans Nuwegeld, Honggeun Kim et al.
8 citations
RAS Techniques and Instruments
Antenna Design and Optimization
39.95
article

<tt>matvis</tt>: a matrix-based visibility simulator for fast forward modelling of many-element 21 cm arrays

Bradley Marero, Eloy de Lera Acedo, Hans Nuwegeld, Honggeun Kim, Tashalee S. Billings, James Robnett, Piyanat Kittiwisit, Mário G. Santos, Yin-Zhe Ma, M. F. Morales, Ziyaad Halday, Adrian Liu, Aaron Ewall‐Wice, Jackson Sipple, Jacob Burba, Joshua Kerrigan, Dara Storer, G. Bernardi, Nico Eksteen, Philip Bull, Joshua S. Dillon, Peter Sims, David R. DeBoer, J. Hickish, Tyrone Adams, Mathakane Molewa, Cresshim Malgas, Lourence Malan, Adam P. Beardsley, Jianrong Tan, B. K. Gehlot, Hugh Garsden, Steven Murray, N. Razavi‐Ghods, Adam Lanman, Keith Malgas, Hilton Swarts, Lisa McBride, Adélie Gorce, Daniel Jacobs, Alec Josaitis, T. Cox, Deepthi Gorthi, Tshegofalang Mosiane, Richard F. Bradley, Eleanor Rath, David H. E. MacMahon, Nicholas S. Kern, Michael J. Wilensky, Matthew Kolopanis, Paul La Plante, Saurabh Singh, C. L. Carilli, Zhilei Xu, Nicolas Fagnoni, Zachary E. Martinot, Nithyanandan Thyagarajan, Pieter van Wyngaarden, Bradley Greig, Christopher Cain, Robert Pascua, Brian Glendenning, Jasper Grobbelaar, Haimei Zheng, James Aguirre, Steven R. Furlanetto, Andrei Mesinger, Chuneeta D. Nunhokee, Jacqueline N. Hewitt, Yuxiang Qin, B. J. Hazelton, Samir Choudhuri, Judd D. Bowman, Rushelle Baartman, Aaron R. Parsons, Kingsley Gale‐Sides, Lindsay M. Berkhout, Steven Carey, Kai-Feng Chen, Matt Dexter, John Ely
article en
8 citations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Detection of the faint 21 cm line emission from the Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization will require not only exquisite control over instrumental calibration and systematics to achieve the necessary dynamic range of observations but also validation of analysis techniques to demonstrate their statistical properties and signal loss characteristics. A key ingredient in achieving this is the ability to perform high-fidelity simulations of the kinds of data that are produced by the large, many-element, radio interferometric arrays that have been purpose-built for these studies. The large scale of these arrays presents a computational challenge, as one must simulate a detailed sky and instrumental model across many hundreds of frequency channels, thousands of time samples, and tens of thousands of baselines for arrays with hundreds of antennas. In this paper, we present a fast matrix-based method for simulating radio interferometric measurements (visibilities) at the necessary scale. We achieve this through judicious use of primary beam interpolation, fast approximations for coordinate transforms, and a vectorized outer product to expand per-antenna quantities to per-baseline visibilities, coupled with standard parallelization techniques. We validate the results of this method, implemented in the publicly available matvis code, against a high-precision reference simulator, and explore its computational scaling on a variety of problems.

RAS Techniques and InstrumentsVol. 4
Raman Research Institute (IN), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), Space Science Institute (US), University of Nevada, Las Vegas (US), Scuola Normale Superiore (IT), University of California, Los Angeles (US), The University of Melbourne (AU), Queen Mary University of London (GB), University of Washington (US), Rhodes University (ZA), Curtin University (AU), University of Cambridge (GB), Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IN), Stellenbosch University (ZA), National Radio Astronomy Observatory (US), Université Paris-Saclay (FR), Brown University (US), American Society for Radiation Oncology (US), University of Manchester (GB), ASTRO-3D (AU), Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (FR), Istituto di Radioastronomia di Bologna (IT), South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (ZA), Astronomy and Space (AU), ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (AU), International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (AU), McGill University (CA), Arizona State University (US), Winona State University (US), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US), University of Pennsylvania (US), University of the Western Cape (ZA), University of KwaZulu-Natal (ZA), University of California, Berkeley (US)
National Science Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Commission, National Research Foundation, University of Pretoria, University of the Western Cape, Universiteit Stellenbosch, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, University of Cape Town, Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, H2020 European Research Council
Openalex Percentile: Top 0%
Antenna Design and Optimization
39.95
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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