MIGHTEE-H i: H i galaxy properties in the large-scale structure environment at z ∼ 0.37 from a stacking experiment

ABSTRACT We present the first measurement of H i mass of star-forming galaxies in different large scale structure environments from a blind survey at z ∼ 0. 37. In particular, we carry out a spectral line stacking analysis considering 2875 spectra of colour-selected star-forming galaxies undetected in H i at 0. 23 z 0. 49 in the COSMOS field, extracted from the MIGHTEE-H i Early Science data cubes, acquired with the MeerKAT radio telescope. We stack galaxies belonging to different subsamples depending on three different definitions of large-scale structure environment: local galaxy overdensity, position inside the host dark matter halo (central, satellite, or isolated), and cosmic web type (field, filament, or knot). We first stack the full star-forming galaxy sample and find a robust H i detection yielding an average galaxy H i mass of M ₇ \, ₈= (8. 12 0. 75) 10⁹\, M_ at ∼11. 8σ. Next, we investigate the different subsamples finding a negligible difference in MH i as a function of the galaxy overdensity. We report an H i excess compared to the full sample in satellite galaxies (MH i = (11. 31 ± 1. 22) × 109, at ∼10. 2σ) and in filaments (MH i = (11. 62 ± 0. 90) × 109. Conversely, we report non-detections for the central and knot galaxies subsamples, which appear to be H i-deficient. We find the same qualitative results also when stacking in units of H i fraction (fH i). We conclude that the H i amount in star-forming galaxies at the studied redshifts correlates with the large-scale structure environment.