Tianlai Interferometer Array for Dark Energy Radio Detecting and Transient Objects Survey

Abstract

The Tianlai project is a dedicated experiment to test key techniques for 21 cm Intensity Mapping of dark energy radio detection over the redshift range z<3. It is comprised of two pathfinder arrays: the cylinder array with three 15m-wide cylindrical antennas oriented in the north-south direction, and the dish array with 16 dishes of 6m aperture. These arrays observe large area of sky by drift scan. Recently fast radio burst (FRB) backends with digital beam forming capability are installed, which could form 16 beams for the dish array and 96 beams for the cylinder array with the time resolution better than 0.2 millisecond. The original correlation backend and the FRB backend will work simultaneously, so that the intensity mapping experiment could be conducted along with FRB search at the same time.