Emission-line stacking of 21 cm intensity maps with MeerKLASS: inference pipeline and application to the L-band deep-field data

Abstract

We present a novel analysis of observational systematics through the emission-line stacking of the MeerKLASS L-band deep-field intensity maps, following the detection in MeerKLASS Collaboration et al. A stacking signal is obtained by stacking the 21 cm intensity map cubelets around the galaxy positions from the GAMA survey at 0.39 ≲ z ≲ 0.46. An extensive simulation framework is built to study the viability of the stacking detection, the covariance estimation, and the model inference, which are then applied to the data. The statistical significance of the detection is 8.66σ when averaged into an angular map, and 7.45σ when averaged into a spectrum. The stacked spectrum exhibits an oscillating component of systematics, and we provide evidence that these systematics are a convolutional effect on the map data. The oscillation frequency matches the diffraction from the secondary reflector into the primary beam of the MeerKAT telescope. Bayesian inference can be used to constrain the systematics and the average H i emission of the galaxies. The fitting of the parameters gives a constraint on the systematics frequency ν sys [ MHz ] = 17.9 0 − 4.27 + 6.53 . The posterior of the systematics amplitude reaches the wide prior and gives A sys = 0.5 0 − 0.33 + 0.33 . A tentative measurement of the average H i mass of the sources is achieved at log 10 [ 〈 M H I 〉 / M ⊙ ] = 9.8 4 − 0.59 + 0.48 , which is an underestimation limited by the narrow redshift bin, the strong degeneracy with the systematics, and the low-density galaxy sample. These shortfalls will be resolved for future MeerKLASS data to enable accurate measurements of the H i density through stacking of intensity maps.