PRISME-21 - Public Reference for Interferometric Simulations for Foreground Mitigation in the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) 21-cm signal

PRISME-21, which stands for Public Reference for Interferometric Simulations for Foreground Mitigation in the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) 21-cm signal, is an open-access artificial dataset specifically designed to advance research on the removal of astrophysical foregrounds in 21-cm cosmological observations. The detection of the faint 21-cm signal from neutral hydrogen during the EoR is one of the most challenging tasks in modern observational cosmology, primarily due to the overwhelming contamination from Galactic emission and extragalactic radio sources. PRISME-21 addresses this challenge by providing a controlled, well-documented dataset for testing and benchmarking foreground mitigation techniques.Developed during the Science Data Challenge (SDC3a) by the Swiss-Swedish collaborative team SEarCH, the dataset underwent extensive cleaning, refinement, and validation to ensure scientific reliability and usability. It includes realistic interferometric simulations that mimic the complexity of foregrounds, instrumental effects, and noise, thereby offering a robust platform for algorithm development. By making PRISME-21 openly available to the scientific community, we aim to foster innovation in statistical and machine-learning approaches for signal extraction, noise suppression, and systematic error correction. This resource is expected to benefit both astrophysicists and data scientists working on next-generation radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of cosmic dawn and the formation of the first luminous structures in the Universe.The dataset is accessible using the procedure presented at : https://github.com/Emmanuel-desalis/sdc3-simdata