Status and perspectives of the CRAFTS extra-galactic HI survey

• Published in: arXiv.org 2019-03
• Main Authors: Zhang, Kai, Wu, Jingwen, Li, Di, Krčo, Marko, Staveley-Smith, Lister, Tang, Ningyu, Qian, Lei, Liu, Mengting, Jin, Chengjin, Yue, Youling, Zhu, Yan, Liu, Hongfei, Yu, Dongjun, Sun, Jinghai, Pan, Gaofeng, Li, Hui, Gan, Hengqian, Yao, Rui, FAST Collaboration
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Apertures; Astronomy; Dependence; Frequency ranges; Galaxies; Radio astronomy; Radio telescopes; Red shift; Sky surveys (astronomy)
• ISSN: 2331-8422

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope(FAST) is expected to complete its commissioning in 2019. FAST will soon begin the Commensal Radio Astronomy FasT Survey(CRAFTS), a novel and unprecedented commensal drift scan survey of the entire sky visible from FAST. The goal of CRAFTS is to cover more than 20000 \(deg^{2}\) and reach redshift up to about 0.35. We provide empirical measurements of the beam size and sensitivity of FAST across the 1.05 to 1.45 GHz frequency range of the FAST L-band Array of 19-beams(FLAN). Using a simulated HI-galaxy catalogue based on the HI Mass Function(HIMF), we estimate the number of galaxies that CRAFTS may detect. At redshifts below 0.35, over \(6\, \times \, 10^{5}\) HI galaxies may be detected. Below the redshift of 0.07, the CRAFTS HIMF will be complete above a mass threshold of \(10^{9.5}\,M_{\odot}\). FAST will be able to investigate the environmental and redshift dependence of the HIMF to an unprecedented depth, shedding light onto the missing baryon and missing satellite problems.