FLASH: The First Large Absorption Survey in HI with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder

FLASH is a blind neutral hydrogen (HI) absorption line survey, eventually targeting about 100,000 background radio continuum sources in the entire southern sky using the full 36-antenna of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). Our primary goal is to search for associated and intervening HI absorption lines in the intermediate redshift range 0.4 < z < 1.0. The survey aims to understand the evolution of HI gas in galaxies as well as various physical mechanisms in active galactic nuclei, such as accretion and feedback processes. In this poster, we give an overview of the FLASH survey and present the preliminary results from our first 100-hrs of pilot observations. The latest survey data covers 1,000 square degrees and is ideal for validating observation and data processing in the continuous 300MHz-width low frequency ASKAP band (700-1000MHz). One of the crucial objectives of the pilot survey is to establish the analysis methodology that will be applied to upcoming large absorption surveys in the future. We discuss our data quality validation and present some detections of associated/intervening HI absorption lines. These absorption lines allow us to trace the cold gas properties of active and normal galaxies at higher redshifts where the HI emission line is too weak to be detectable.