Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2008-03-14
Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 389 (2008) 1163-1178
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
16 pages, 9 figures, replaced to match version accepted by MNRAS (major additions to previous version including new fast wavel
Scientific paper
10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13690.x
Aperture array interferometers, such as that proposed for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), will see the entire sky, hence the standard approach to simulating visibilities will not be applicable since it relies on a tangent plane approximation that is valid only for small fields of view. We derive interferometric formulations in real, spherical harmonic and wavelet space that include contributions over the entire sky and do not rely on any tangent plane approximations. A fast wavelet method is developed to simulate the visibilities observed by an interferometer in the full-sky setting. Computing visibilities using the fast wavelet method adapts to the sparse representation of the primary beam and sky intensity in the wavelet basis. Consequently, the fast wavelet method exhibits superior computational complexity to the real and spherical harmonic space methods and may be performed at substantially lower computational cost, while introducing only negligible error to simulated visibilities. Low-resolution interferometric observations are simulated using all of the methods to compare their performance, demonstrating that the fast wavelet method is approximately three times faster that the other methods for these low-resolution simulations. The computational burden of the real and spherical harmonic space methods renders these techniques computationally infeasible for higher resolution simulations. High-resolution interferometric observations are simulated using the fast wavelet method only, demonstrating and validating the application of this method to realistic simulations. The fast wavelet method is estimated to provide a greater than ten-fold reduction in execution time compared to the other methods for these high-resolution simulations.
McEwen Don J.
Scaife Anna M. M.
No associations
LandOfFree
Simulating full-sky interferometric observations does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Simulating full-sky interferometric observations, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Simulating full-sky interferometric observations will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-246811