Here is a curated list of relevant astro-ph submissions from February 2026 that align with your research interests in 21-cm cosmology, the Epoch of Reionization (EoR), foreground mitigation, and machine learning. Each paper is mapped directly to the relevant CASSA projects.
Authors: Anirban Chakraborty, Kwanit Gangopadhyay, Arka Banerjee, Tirthankar Roy Choudhury
arXiv Link: arXiv:2602.15803
Summary: To overcome severe contamination from astrophysical foregrounds and instrumental noise, this paper investigates k-nearest-neighbour cumulative distribution functions as an alternative to two-point statistics. The method shows promise in extracting maximal information from 21cm-galaxy cross-correlations even under aggressive foreground filtering.
Relevant CASSA Projects: RiFInE, PrimaBERA, MiMiC
Authors: Sukhdeep Singh Gill, Khandakar Md Asif Elahi, Somnath Bharadwaj, Shiv K. Sethi, Akash Kumar Patwa
arXiv Link: arXiv:2602.17304
Summary: This paper demonstrates the mitigation of dominant astrophysical foregrounds using Smooth Component Filtering (SCF) to estimate the 21 cm bispectrum from Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) observations, establishing new limits on the EoR signal.
Relevant CASSA Projects: RiFInE, PrimaBERA, START
Authors: Pascal M. Keller, Bojan Nikolic, Nithyanandan Thyagarajan
arXiv Link: arXiv:2602.04965
Summary: Aims to establish a mathematical relationship between calibration-independent closure phases and the cosmological 21 cm power spectrum. It provides a robust technique to sidestep calibration inaccuracies that typically compromise the spectral fidelity of the smooth foreground continuum.
Relevant CASSA Projects: CHronOS, START
Authors: Hemanth Potluri, Manas Mohit Dosibhatla, Leon Noble, Chandra Shekhar Murmu, Suman Majumdar, Samit Kumar Pal, Saswata Dasgupta, Satadru Bag, Abhirup Datta
arXiv Link: arXiv:2602.16651
Summary: By analyzing 21-cm brightness temperature fields in the image domain to retain non-Gaussian characteristics, this work tracks the coalescence of ionized regions using the Largest Cluster Statistic (LCS) to infer the topology of the EoR along a lightcone.
Relevant CASSA Projects: PrimaBERA
Authors: Kaifeng Yu, Xin Wang
arXiv Link: arXiv:2602.03313
Summary: Employs a deep learning approach to recover large-scale baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) lost to foreground avoidance strategies. It attempts to restore missing large-scale modes by exploiting physical non-linear mode coupling from short-wavelength data.
Relevant CASSA Projects: MiMiC, RiFInE
Authors: Sudipta Sikder, Rajesh Mondal, Rennan Barkana, Anastasia Fialkov
arXiv Link: arXiv:2602.13445
Summary: Investigates how an inhomogeneous excess galactic radio background and line-of-sight fluctuations from early galaxies introduce significant non-Gaussianity into the Cosmic Dawn 21-cm signal, which can be measured using the squeezed-limit bispectrum.
Relevant CASSA Projects: PrimaBERA, CHronOS
Authors: Emilie Thélie, Sarah Libanore, Yonatan Sklansky, Julian B. Muñoz, Ely D. Kovetz
arXiv Link: arXiv:2602.12277
Summary: Because directly mapping ionized bubbles is challenging due to high redshifts and intense foregrounds, this paper reconstructs the ionized-bubble size distribution during the EoR through the real-space cross-correlation of 21-cm and star-forming line-intensity maps.
Relevant CASSA Projects: PrimaBERA