Quantifying Foreground Contamination in the Dark Ages 21 cm Power Spectrum Using an Electromagnetically Simulated Dipole Antenna Atop a Dielectric Surface

arXiv:2607.11929 · astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.CO · Submitted 2026-07-10 · Read on arXiv

Willow Smith, Jonathan C. Pober, Bang D. Nahn, Jack O. Burns, Ronald S. Polidan

astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.CO

Submitted: 2026-07-10

Comments: 14 pages, 9 figures

Code: https://github.com/aelanman/lunarsky

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Frequency Dependence — 3× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Modularity — 2× in this paper · explained in 9 episodes
• Trace — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Accuracy — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Aperture — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Consistency — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Cosmic Microwave Background — 1× in this paper
• Epoch of Reionization — 1× in this paper
• Finite Integration Technique — 1× in this paper
• Global Sky Model — 1× in this paper
• Perfectly Matched Layer — 1× in this paper
• Self-consistency — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Sources

• LuSEE 'Night': The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment
• The Dark Ages Explorer (DEX): a filled-aperture ultra-long wavelength radio interferometer on the lunar far side
• Global 21-cm Cosmology from the Farside of the Moon
• The FarView Low Frequency Radio Array on the Moon's Far Side: Science and Array Architecture
• Peering into the Dark (Ages) with Low-Frequency Space Interferometers
• Complete Sampling of the $uv$ Plane with Realistic Radio Arrays: Introducing the RULES Algorithm, with Application to 21 cm Foreground Wedge Removal
• The Impact of Foregrounds on Dark Ages Measurements with the Highly Redshifted 21 cm Line
• FarView: An In-Situ Manufactured Lunar Far Side Radio Array Concept for 21-cm Dark Ages Cosmology
• Electrical coupling of a horizontal dipole antenna to a dielectric half-space: applications to radio astronomy from the lunar surface
• Detecting the 21 cm Signal of the Cosmic Dark Ages

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