Influence of sources with a spectral peak in the detection of Cosmic Dawn and Epoch of Reionization

Abstract

ABSTRACT Foreground removal is one of the biggest challenges in the detection of the Cosmic Dawn (CD) and Epoch of Reionization (EoR). Various foreground subtraction techniques have been developed based on the spectral smoothness of foregrounds. However, the sources with a spectral peak (SP) at megahertz may break down the spectral smoothness at low frequencies (<1000 MHz). In this paper, we cross-match the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array (GLEAM) extragalactic source catalogue with three other radio source catalogues, covering the frequency range 72 MHz–1.4 GHz, to search for sources with spectral turnover. 4423 sources from the GLEAM catalogue are identified as SP sources, representing ≈3.2 per cent of the GLEAM radio source population. We utilize the properties of SP source candidates obtained from real observations to establish simulations and test the impact of SP sources on the extraction of CD/EoR signals. We statistically compare the differences introduced by SP sources in the residuals after removing the foregrounds with three methods, which are polynomial fitting, principal component analysis, and fast independent component analysis. Our results indicate that the presence of SP sources in the foregrounds has a negligible influence on extracting the CD/EoR signal. After foreground subtraction, the contribution from SP sources to the total power in the two-dimensional power spectrum within the EoR window is approximately 3–4 orders of magnitude lower than the CD/EoR signal.