Degree Date
December 2024
Honors & Awards
- 2019 Nathan Hale Associate Fellows
Advisor
Laura Newburgh
Dissertation Title
Drone Calibration Systems for 21 cm Cosmology Experiments
Dissertation Abstract
Measuring the cosmic distribution of neutral hydrogen across a wide redshift range is the long term goal of 21 cm intensity mapping experiments. Removing systematics adequately enough to measure this faint cosmological signal will require improvements to existing calibration techniques and the adoption of technical innovations. The Newburgh group is focused on improving the telescope beam calibration procedures for 21 cm radio interferometers, primarily through the use of drone based transmitters as calibration sources. This dissertation is comprised of an introduction to experimental cosmology, a literature review that reviews relevant topics in radio instrumentation and drone-based beam calibration, and three thesis chapters: The beamcals Module and HIRAX Analysis, Nearfield to Farfield Transformations and CHIME Analysis, and A Digital Noise Source for 21 cm Beam Mapping.