The BINGO project

I. Baryon acoustic oscillations from integrated neutral gas observations

¹ Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo – C.P. 66318, CEP 05315-970 São Paulo, Brazil
e-mail: eabdalla@usp.br; bingotelescope@usp.br
² Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild Str. 1, 85741 Garching, Germany
³ Technische Universität München, Physik-Department T70, James-Franck-Straße 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁴ Center for Gravitation and Cosmology, College of Physical Science and Technology, Yangzhou University 225009, PR China
⁵ Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, Divisão de Astrofísica, Av. dos Astronautas, 1758, 12227-010 São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
⁷ Department of Physics and Electronics, Rhodes University, PO Box 94, Grahamstown 6140, South Africa
⁸ Unidade Acadêmica de Física, Univ. Federal de Campina Grande, R. Aprígio Veloso, 58429-900 Campina Grande, Brazil
⁹ Instituto de Física, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, DF, Brazil
¹⁰ School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China
¹¹ School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Minhang, Shanghai 200240, PR China
¹² Center for Theoretical Physics of the Universe, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Daejeon 34126, Korea
¹³ Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 80 Nandan Road, Shanghai 200030, PR China
¹⁴ Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
¹⁵ Laboratoire Astroparticule et Cosmologie (APC), CNRS/IN2P3, Université Paris Diderot, 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France
¹⁶ IRFU, CEA, Université Paris Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
¹⁷ Department of Astronomy, School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, PR China
¹⁸ Center for Research and Development in Mathematics and Applications – CIDMA, Campus de Santiago, 3810-183 Aveiro, Portugal
¹⁹ MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
²⁰ School of Chemistry and Physics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville Campus, Private Bag X54001, Durban 4000, South Africa
²¹ NAOC-UKZN Computational Astrophysics Centre (NUCAC), University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4000, South Africa
²² Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale, Orsay (CNRS-INSU), France
²³ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, 38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
²⁴ Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), 38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
²⁵ Centro de Gestão e Estudos Estratégicos – CGEE, SCS Quadra 9, Lote C, Torre C s/n Salas 401-405, 70308-200 Brasília, DF, Brazil
²⁶ Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Caixa Postal 5008, 58051-970 João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil

Received: 24 March 2021
Accepted: 27 July 2021

Abstract

Context. Observations of the redshifted 21-cm line of neutral hydrogen (H I) are a new and powerful window of observation that offers us the possibility to map the spatial distribution of cosmic H I and learn about cosmology. Baryon Acoustic Oscillations from Integrated Neutral Gas Observations (BINGO) is a new unique radio telescope designed to be one of the first to probe baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) at radio frequencies.

Aims. BINGO has two science goals: cosmology and astrophysics. Cosmology is the main science goal and the driver for BINGO’s design and strategy. The key of BINGO is to detect the low redshift BAO to put strong constraints on the dark sector models and test the ΛCDM (cold dark matter) model. Given the versatility of the BINGO telescope, a secondary goal is astrophysics, where BINGO can help discover and study fast radio bursts (FRB) and other transients, as well as study Galactic and extragalactic science. In this paper, we introduce the latest progress of the BINGO project, its science goals, describing the scientific potential of the project for each goal and the new developments obtained by the collaboration.

Methods. BINGO is a single dish transit telescope that will measure the BAO at low-z by making a 3D map of the H I distribution through the technique of intensity mapping over a large area of the sky. In order to achieve the project’s goals, a science strategy and a specific pipeline for cleaning and analyzing the produced maps and mock maps was developed by the BINGO team, which we generally summarize here.

Results. We introduce the BINGO project and its science goals and give a general summary of recent developments in construction, science potential, and pipeline development obtained by the BINGO Collaboration in the past few years. We show that BINGO will be able to obtain competitive constraints for the dark sector. It also has the potential to discover several FRBs in the southern hemisphere. The capacity of BINGO in obtaining information from 21-cm is also tested in the pipeline introduced here. Following these developments, the construction and observational strategies of BINGO have been defined.

Conclusions. There is still no measurement of the BAO in radio, and studying cosmology in this new window of observations is one of the most promising advances in the field. The BINGO project is a radio telescope that has the goal to be one of the first to perform this measurement and it is currently being built in the northeast of Brazil. This paper is the first of a series of papers that describe in detail each part of the development of the BINGO project.