21-cm foregrounds and polarization leakage: cleaning and mitigation strategies

ABSTRACT The success of H i intensity mapping is largely dependent on how well 21-cm foreground contamination can be controlled. In order to progress our understanding further, we present a range of simulated foreground data from two different ∼3000 deg2 sky regions, with varying effects from polarization leakage. Combining these with cosmological H i simulations creates a range of intensity mapping test cases that require different foreground treatments. This allows us to conduct the most generalized study to date into 21-cm foregrounds and their cleaning techniques for the post-reionization era. We first provide a pedagogical review of the most commonly used blind foreground removal techniques principal component analysis (PCA) /singular value decomposition (SVD), fast independent component analysis (FASTICA), and generalized morphological component analysis (GMCA). We also trial a non-blind parametric fitting technique and discuss potential hybridization of methods. We highlight the similarities and differences in these techniques finding that the blind methods produce near equivalent results, and we explain the fundamental reasons for this. Our results demonstrate that polarized foreground residuals should be generally subdominant to H i on small scales (k 0. 1\, h\, Mpc^-1). However, on larger scales, results are more case dependent. In some cases, aggressive cleans severely damp H i power but still leave dominant foreground residuals. We find a changing polarization fraction has little impact on results within a realistic range (0. 5–2 per cent) ; however, a higher level of Faraday rotation does require more aggressive cleaning. We also demonstrate the gain from cross-correlations with optical galaxy surveys, where extreme levels of residual foregrounds can be circumvented. However, these residuals still contribute to errors and we discuss the optimal balance between overcleaning and undercleaning.