First Season MWA Phase II Epoch of Reionization Power Spectrum Results at Redshift 7

Abstract

The compact configuration of Phase II of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) consists of both a redundant subarray and pseudo-random baselines, offering unique opportunities to perform sky-model and redundant interferometric calibration. The highly redundant hexagonal cores give improved power spectrum sensitivity. In this paper, we present the analysis of nearly 40 hr of data targeting one of the MWA's epoch of reionization (EoR) fields observed in 2016. We use both improved analysis techniques presented in Barry et al. and several additional techniques developed for this work, including data quality control methods and interferometric calibration approaches. We show the EoR power spectrum limits at redshift 6.5, 6.8, and 7.1 based on our deep analysis on this 40 hr data set. These limits span a range in k-space of 0.18 h Mpc-1 < k < 1.6 h Mpc-1, with a lowest measurement of Δ2 ≤ 2.39 × 103 mK2 at k = 0.59 h Mpc-1 and z = 6.5.