PAPER: 8 Station Results

Yesterday I submitted our paper on the 4- and 8-antenna deployments of PAPER to the Astronomical Journal & astro-ph. Although it does not place any meaningful constraints on cosmic reionization (when light from the first stars broke up the bulk of the hydrogen gas that had been sitting around since it originally formed), it nonetheless illustrates a first level of calibration and analysis towards that goal. This paper should have some impact in the community, as it shows that we are fairly well along in our experiment and it provides a first look at some of the astrophysical foregrounds that will interfere with detecting reionization. This paper also will double as the last chapter of my dissertation, so publishing it puts me in the endgame of my doctoral studies... This fall I'm going to take an NSF postdoc back at Berkeley. Basically, that just means I'll be doing the same research (along with some teaching), but with better pay.