English

meer21cm: an Analysis Pipeline and Comprehensive Toolkit for HI Intensity Mapping

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-07-02 v1 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

We present meer21cm, a comprehensive python package for cosmological data analysis of single-dish HI intensity mapping surveys. This package is simple to use, with a modularised code structure designed for interactive usage. meer21cm is designed for data analysis, with particular focus on the UHF-band observation of MeerKAT Large Area Synoptic Survey (MeerKLASS). We explicitly impose meer21cm to be survey-oriented, ensuring consistent modelling of observational effects in the clustering power spectrum with the survey specifications and data analysis choices. meer21cm covers a large range of data analysis procedures post calibration, including data read-in, foreground cleaning, power spectrum estimation, mock simulation, transfer function corrections and parameter inference. It handles both meer21cm intensity maps and overlapping galaxy catalogues, allowing for multi-tracer and cross-correlation analysis between MeerKLASS and optical galaxy surveys. Tested with a simulated survey of ten 750750\,deg2^2 sky patches in the redshift sub-band 0.6<z<0.80.6\,{<}\,z\,{<}\,0.8, the meer21cm pipeline achieves per-cent accuracy in the power spectrum estimation for k[0.02,0.2]hMpc1k \in [0.02, 0.2]\,{h{\rm Mpc}^{-1}}, with deviations 0.5σ\lesssim 0.5\sigma between the mock and the model power spectra, where σ\sigma is the signal variance. The meer21cm package is publicly available and easy to install, with a comprehensive documentation website at https://meer21cm.readthedocs.io

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.01864,
  title  = {meer21cm: an Analysis Pipeline and Comprehensive Toolkit for HI Intensity Mapping},
  author = {Zhaoting Chen and Steven Cunnington and Daniel Tassie and Alkistis Pourtsidou and Laura Wolz and Gabriele Autieri and Matilde Barberi-Squarotti and José Luis Bernal and Phil Bull and Stefano Camera and Isabella P. Carucci and Brandon Engelbrecht and José Fonseca and Karin Fornazier and Keith Grainge and Jiakang Han and Wenkai Hu and Melis O. Irfan and Piyanat Kittiwisit and Yichao Li and Sefa Pamuk and Mario G. Santos and Marta Spinelli and Jingying Wang and Amadeus Witzemann and Boyan Zhao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.01864},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Prepared for submission to the Open Journal of Astrophysics