MIGHTEE-HI: The H I emission project of the MeerKAT MIGHTEE survey

Abstract

We present the H i emission project within the MIGHTEE survey, currently being carried out with the newly commissioned MeerKAT radio telescope. This is one of the first deep, blind, medium-wide interferometric surveys for neutral hydrogen (H i) ever undertaken, extending our knowledge of H i emission to z = 0.6. The science goals of this medium-deep, medium-wide survey are extensive, including the evolution of the neutral gas content of galaxies over the past 5 billion years. Simulations predict nearly 3000 galaxies over 0 < z < 0.4 will be detected directly in H i, with statistical detections extending to z = 0.6. The survey allows us to explore H i as a function of galaxy environment, with massive groups and galaxy clusters within the survey volume. Additionally, the area is large enough to contain as many as 50 local galaxies with H i mass < 10 8 M ⊙ , which allows us to study the low-mass galaxy population. The 20 deg 2 main survey area is centred on fields with exceptional multi-wavelength ancillary data, with photometry ranging from optical through far-infrared wavelengths, supplemented with multiple spectroscopic campaigns. We describe here the survey design and the key science goals. We also show first results from the Early Science observations, including kinematic modelling of individual sources, along with the redshift, H i, and stellar mass ranges of the sample to date.

MIGHTEE: total intensity radio continuum imaging and the COSMOS/XMM-LSS Early Science fields

“…MIGHTEE is one of MeerKAT's flagship Large Survey Projects, a galaxy evolution survey that is using simultaneous continuum, polarimetry (Sekhar et al, in prep. ) and spectral line (Maddox et al 2021) measurements to investigate the formation and evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. It will use ∼1000 h of observations with MeerKAT's L-band receivers, with the goal of imaging 20 square degrees over four extragalactic deep fields, namely COSMOS, the Extended Chandra Deep Field South (E-CDFS), the southermost field of the European Large Area ISO Survey (ELAIS-S1), and the XMM-Newton Large Scale Structure field (XMM-LSS).…”

MIGHTEE-HI: discovery of an H i-rich galaxy group atz = 0.044 with MeerKAT

“…Source finding was done visually and unguided by members of the MIGHTEE-HI Working Group (WG), as described in Maddox et al (2021). We find 19 H detections in the region we associate with the galaxy group, both spatially and spectrally.…”

“…Amongst the primary data products in the XMM-LSS field are from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP, Aihara et al 2017) and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS; Cuillandre et al 2012) in optical wavelengths, and the VISTA VIDEO (Jarvis et al 2013) survey in the near-infrared. A detailed description of these is provided in Maddox et al (2021).…”

H i intensity mapping with the MIGHTEE survey: power spectrum estimates

“…The observation took place with the 64-antenna MeerKAT configuration spanning over two days -19-Apr-2018 and 06-May-2018. Maddox et al (2021) provides a detailed description of the MIGHTEE survey design and observational methods. Along with the target COSMOS field, the fields J0408-6545 and 3C237 were observed as the primary and secondary calibrators respectively.…”

“…Our pipeline is based on the methods being developed for similar statistical measurement of HI from the Epoch of Reionization from a series of experiments at lower radio frequencies such as LOFAR (Van Haarlem, M. P. et al 2013), GMRT (Paciga et al 2013), PAPER (Parsons et al 2014), HERA (DeBoer et al 2017 and MWA (Tingay et al 2013). We show that with MIGHTEE (Jarvis et al 2016;Maddox et al 2021), one of MeerKAT's large survey projects, we can achieve constraints on the HI power spectrum at z = 0.27. There are implicit advantages with such survey projects with a specific emission line.…”