Title:	SARAS 2 constraints on global 21-cm signals from the Epoch of Reionization
Authors:	Singh, Saurabh Subrahmanyan, Ravi Udaya Shankar, N. Sathyanarayana Rao, Mayuri Fialkov, Anastasia Cohen, Aviad Barkana, Rennan Girish, B.S. Raghunathan, A. Somashekar, R. Srivani, K.S.
Issue Date:	1-May-2018
Publisher:	IOP Sciences for The American Astronomical Society
Citation:	Astrophysical Journal, 2018, Vol. 858, p54
Abstract:	Spectral distortions in the cosmic microwave background over the 40–200 MHz band are imprinted by neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium prior to the end of reionization. This signal, produced in the redshift range z = 6–34 at the rest-frame wavelength of 21 cm, has not been detected yet; and a poor understanding of high-redshift astrophysics results in a large uncertainty in the expected spectrum. The SARAS 2 radiometer was purposely designed to detect the sky-averaged 21 cm signal. The instrument, deployed at the Timbaktu Collective (Southern India) in 2017 April–June, collected 63 hr of science data, which were examined for the presence of the cosmological 21 cm signal. In our previous work, the first-light data from the SARAS 2 radiometer were analyzed with Bayesian likelihood-ratio tests using 264 plausible astrophysical scenarios. In this paper we reexamine the data using an improved analysis based on the frequentist approach and forward-modeling. We show that SARAS 2 data reject 20 models, out of which 15 are rejected at a significance >5σ. All the rejected models share the scenario of inefficient heating of the primordial gas by the first population of X-ray sources, along with rapid reionization.
Description:	Open Access.
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/2289/6890
ISSN:	0004-637X 1538-4357-(Online)
Alternative Location:	http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/abs/2018ExA....45..269S https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.11281 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aabae1
Copyright:	2018 The American Astronomical Society
Appears in Collections:	Research Papers (A&A)

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