The Large-Aperture Experiment to Detect the Dark Age (LEDA) was designed to detect the predicted O(100) mK sky-averaged absorption of the Cosmic Microwave Background by Hydrogen in the neutral pre-and intergalactic medium just after the cosmological Dark Age. The spectral signature would be associated with emergence of a diffuse Lyα background from starlight during 'Cosmic Dawn'. Recently, Bowman et al. (2018) have reported detection of this predicted absorption feature, with an unexpectedly large amplitude of 530 mK, centered at 78 MHz. Verification of this result by an independent experiment, such as LEDA, is pressing. In this paper, we detail design and characterization of the LEDA radiometer systems, and a first-generation pipeline that instantiates a signal path model. Sited at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory Long Wavelength Array, LEDA systems include the station correlator, five well-separated redundant dual polarization radiometers and backend electronics. The radiometers deliver a 30-85 MHz band (16 < z < 34) and operate as part of the larger interferometric array, for purposes ultimately of in situ calibration. Here, we report on the LEDA system design, calibration approach, and progress in characterization as of January 2016. The LEDA systems are currently being modified to improve performance near 78 MHz in order to verify the purported absorption feature.
Recent observational evidence that magnetic fields are dynamically important in molecular clouds, compared to self-gravity and turbulence, is reviewed and illustrated with data from the NGC 2024 region. One piece of evidence, turbulence anisotropy, was found in the diffuse envelope of a cloud (A v ≈ 1; Heyer et al. 2008); our data further suggest turbulence anisotropy in the cloud (A v > 7) and even near the cloud core (A v ∼ 100). The data also show that magnetic fields can channel gravitational contraction even for a region with supercritical N(H 2 )/2B los ratio (the ratio between the observed column density and two times the line-of-sight observed field strength), a parameter which has been widely used by observers to estimate core massto-flux ratios. Although the mass-to-flux ratio is constant under the flux-freezing condition, we show that N(H 2 )/2B los grows with time if gravitational contraction is anisotropic due to magnetic fields.
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