Tags - (3) SKA telescope

Department(s)/lab(s): School of Physics | Barry Epoch of Reionisation Group @ UNSW
Summary:

Barry works on the detection of the 21-cm signal from the Epoch of Reionisation with the Murchison Widefield Array and, prospectively, SKA-Low. Her specialty is calibration systematics: she has shown how small errors in the sky and beam model propagate into spectral structure that mimics or swamps the cosmological signal, and has developed the diagnostic and mitigation framework that current MWA upper limits rest on. This is a measurement whose entire difficulty is instrumental. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the intellectual structure is identical to a hard magnetometry measurement: raw sensitivity is adequate, and everything depends on understanding correlated, instrument-induced systematics well enough to subtract them below the signal. Early-career PI (DECRA). Borderline astronomy inclusion, kept on the systematics/instrument criterion.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics (Cavendish Astrophysics) | Cavendish Radio Astronomy and Cosmology Group @ Cambridge
Summary:

de Lera Acedo heads the Cavendish Radio Astronomy and Cosmology group and is PI of the REACH experiment, a global 21-cm signal radiometer deployed in the Karoo desert, South Africa, targeting detection of the redshifted hydrogen signal from the Cosmic Dawn (zā‰ˆ7.5–28). He has a PDRA opening for 21-cm cosmology data analysis. Research spans novel antenna design, ultra-low-noise receiver calibration (achieving ~80 mK RMSE), Bayesian foreground modelling, and RFI mitigation. He also leads the CosmoCube space mission concept for lunar-orbit 21-cm observations and is active in SKA development and HERA. He is actively hiring postdocs (PDRA posting live in 2025).

Department(s)/lab(s): School of Physics | Webster Astrophysics Group @ UMelb
Summary:

Webster works on the Epoch of Reionisation with the Murchison Widefield Array, where the science goal — detecting the redshifted 21-cm signal from the first stars — is a five-orders-of-magnitude foreground-subtraction and instrumental-calibration problem rather than an astrophysics problem. Her group's contributions are in foreground modelling, ionospheric and beam calibration, and the statistical detection of a signal buried far below the systematics floor; she also works on quasar accretion physics. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the methodological parallel is exact: like a pT/sqrt(Hz) NV ensemble measurement, a 21-cm detection lives or dies on the control of correlated systematics rather than on raw sensitivity. Borderline inclusion under the astronomy criterion, kept because the array and its calibration are the central object of study.