Laura Newburgh
Yale University, CT·Astronomy & Astrophysics
The universe's expansion is speeding up, driven by an unexplained ingredient called dark energy. One way to study it is to map how matter clusters across cosmic history.
- Fields
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics
Engineering
- Topics
21cm cosmology
neutral hydrogen
hydrogen intensity mapping
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Develop modeling frameworks and analysis pipelines for cross-correlating CHIME 21cm hydrogen maps with galaxy surveys, and integrate improved models of the telescope beam into the analysis.
- Implement radio-frequency interference removal based on cyclostationary signal processing, plus foreground filters robust to dominant systematic errors, aiming for a CHIME-only detection of large-scale structure and baryon acoustic oscillations.
- Upgrade a drone-mountable digital radio calibration source using newer Xilinx RFSoC boards for wider bandwidth and better stability, and allow several sources to operate at once.
- Deploy the digital calibrators on drones to map the beams of new 21cm telescope arrays, and explore their use for stabilizing instrument gain.
- Build a more robust lab version of the DSPIRA education-oriented radio receiver for outreach with high school teachers and students.
More about the research
Hydrogen gas, found in all galaxies, emits radio waves at a wavelength of 21 centimeters, so radio telescopes can map this clustering over large volumes. The faint hydrogen signal sits under much brighter radio emission from our own galaxy and from human-made interference. Removing that foreground requires knowing the telescope's behavior extremely precisely. This work, part of multi-institution collaborations, tackles that challenge through data analysis on the CHIME telescope and through new calibration hardware.
Why it matters
These projects aim to give an independent measurement of how matter clusters through cosmic time, which can test ideas about dark energy, the cause of the universe's accelerating expansion. The drone-mounted digital calibrators could help new radio telescopes studying dark energy, reionization and the cosmic dark ages remove bright foregrounds. The calibration and interference-removal techniques may also apply to other precise radio instruments.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Andrew Harris
University of Maryland, MD·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Duplicate the existing COMAP Pathfinder receiver and use it to carry out a sky survey of redshifted carbon monoxide (CO) emission by line intensity mapping.
Kieran Cleary
California Institute of Technology, CA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Build a duplicate of the COMAP Pathfinder receiver and use it to survey the carbon monoxide (CO) line across the sky through line intensity mapping, which measures the combined glow of many galaxies.
Aaron Parsons
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Measure the redshifted 21-cm radio signal from neutral hydrogen, emitted at a rest frequency of 1420 MHz, across 50–250 MHz using the HERA array of 350 dish antennas, to trace the universe from the Cosmic Dawn to reionization.
The school
Yale University: 73 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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