arXiv subjects

Yichao Li

Publications and source records attributed to Yichao Li.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Fast radio burst energy function in the presence of $\rm DM_{host}$ variation

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been found in great numbers, but the physical mechanism of these sources is still a mystery. The redshift evolutions of the FRB energy distribution function and the volumetric rate shed light on the origin of FRBs. However, such estimations rely on the dispersion measurement (DM)-redshift ($z$) relationship. A few FRBs that have been detected recently show large excess DMs beyond the expectation from the cosmological and Milky Way contributions, which indicates large spread of DMs from their host galaxies. In this work, we adopt two lognormal-distributed ${\rm DM}_{\rm host}$ models and estimate the energy function using the non-repeating FRBs selected from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)/FRB Catalog 1. By comparing the lognormal-distributed ${\rm DM}_{\rm host}$ models to a constant ${\rm DM}_{\rm host}$ model, the FRB energy function results are consistent within the measurement uncertainty. We also estimate the volumetric rate of the non-repeating FRBs in three different redshift bins. The volumetric rate shows that the trend is consistent with the stellar-mass density redshift evolution. Since the lognormal-distributed ${\rm DM}_{\rm host}$ model increases the measurement errors, the inference of FRBs tracking the stellar-mass density is nonetheless undermined.

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arXiv2024

Radio Frequency Interference from Radio Navigation Satellite Systems: simulations and comparison to MeerKAT single-dish data

Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) is emitted from various sources, terrestrial or orbital, and create a nuisance for ground-based 21cm experiments. In particular, single-dish 21cm intensity mapping experiments will be highly susceptible to contamination from these sources due to its wide primary beam and sensitivity. This work aims to simulate the contamination effects emitted from orbital sources in the Radio Navigational Satellite System within the 1100-1350 MHz frequency. This simulation can be split into two parts: (I) satellite positioning, emission power, and beam response on the telescope and (II) fitting of the satellite signal to data in order to improve the original model. We use previously observed single dish MeerKAT L-band data which needs to be specially calibrated to include data contaminated by satellite-based RFI. We find that due to non-linearity effects, it becomes non-trivial to fit the satellite power. However, when masking regions where this non-linearity is problematic, we can recreate the satellite contamination with high accuracy around its peak frequencies. The simulation can predict satellite movements and signal for past and future observations, which can help in RFI avoidance and testing novel cleaning methods. The predicted signal from simulations sits below the noise in the target cosmology window for the L-band (970 - 1015 MHz) making it difficult to confirm any out-of-band emission from satellites. However, a power spectrum analysis shows that such signal can still contaminate the 21cm power spectrum at these frequencies. In our simulations, this contamination overwhelms the auto-power spectrum but still allows for a clean detection of the signal in cross-correlations with mild foreground cleaning. Whether such contamination does exist one will require further characterization of the satellite signals far away from their peak frequencies.

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arXiv2024

FRB dark sirens: Measuring the Hubble constant with unlocalized fast radio bursts

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) can be used to measure cosmological parameters by employing the Macquart relation. However, at present, only a small number of FRB events are localized to host galaxies with known redshifts. Inspired by the dark siren method in gravitational wave cosmology, we develop a Bayesian method to statistically measure the Hubble constant using unlocalized FRBs and galaxy catalog data, which makes it possible to constrain cosmological parameters from a large number of FRB data without known redshifts, meanwhile including the real galaxy information. We assume that the probability for a galaxy to host an FRB is proportional to the luminosity of this galaxy and use the results from the IllustrisTNG simulation as the priors of FRB host galaxy parameters. Ignoring some systematic errors, we obtain the first statistical $H_0$ measurement only using twelve unlocalized FRB events combined with the big bang nucleosynthesis result, i.e., $H_0=80.4^{+24.1}_{-19.4}$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$, ($68\%$ highest-density interval). This method can also be refined to constrain other cosmological and FRB parameters. It is applicable to well-localized FRBs that still have several potential hosts.

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arXiv2023

Mitigating the effect of 1/f noise on the detection of the HI intensity mapping power spectrum from single-dish measurements

We present and compare several methods to mitigate time-correlated (1/f) noise within the HI intensity mapping component of the MeerKAT Large Area Synoptic Survey (MeerKLASS). By simulating scan strategies, the HI signal, foreground emissions, white and correlated noise, we assess the ability of various data processing pipelines to recover the power spectrum of HI brightness temperature fluctuations. We use MeerKAT pilot data to assess the level of 1/f noise expected for the MeerKLASS survey and use these measurements to create realistic levels of time-correlated noise for our simulations. We find the time-correlated noise component within the pilot data to be between 10 and 20 times higher than the white noise level at the scale of k = 0.04 Mpc^-1. Having determined that the MeerKAT 1/f noise is partially correlated across all the frequency channels, we employ Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) as a technique to remove both the 1/f noise and Galactic foregrounds but find that over-cleaning results in the removal of HI power at large (angular and radial) scales; a power loss of 40 per cent is seen for a 3-mode SVD clean at the scale of k = 0.04 Mpc^-1. We compare the impact of map-making using weighting by the full noise covariance (i.e. including a 1/f component), as opposed to just a simple unweighted binning, finding that including the time-correlated noise information reduces the excess power added by 1/f noise by up to 30 per cent.

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arXiv2023

Synergy between CSST galaxy survey and gravitational-wave observation: Inferring the Hubble constant from dark standard sirens

Gravitational waves (GWs) from compact binary coalescences encode the absolute luminosity distances of GW sources. Once the redshifts of GW sources are known, one can use the distance-redshift relation to constrain cosmological parameters. One way to obtain the redshifts is to localize GW sources by GW observations and then use galaxy catalogs to determine redshifts from a statistical analysis of redshift information of the potential host galaxies, commonly referred to as the dark siren method. The third-generation (3G) GW detectors are planned to work in the 2030s and will observe numerous compact binary coalescences. Using these GW events as dark sirens requires high-quality galaxy catalogs from future sky survey projects. The China Space Station Telescope (CSST) will be launched in 2024 and will observe billions of galaxies within a 17500 deg$^2$ survey area with redshift up to $z\sim 4$, providing photometric and spectroscopic galaxy catalogs. In this work, we simulate the CSST galaxy catalogs and the 5-year GW data from the 3G GW detectors and combine them to infer the Hubble constant ($H_0$). Our results show that the measurement precision of $H_0$ could reach the sub-percent level, meeting the standard of precision cosmology. We conclude that the synergy between CSST and the 3G GW detectors is of great significance in measuring the Hubble constant.

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arXiv2023

Cosmology with fast radio bursts in the era of SKA

We present a forecast of the cosmological parameter estimation using fast radio bursts (FRBs) from the upcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA), focusing on the issues of dark energy, the Hubble constant, and baryon density. We simulate $10^5$ and $10^6$ localized FRBs from a 10-year SKA observation, and find that: (i) using $10^6$ FRB data alone can tightly constrain dark-energy equation of state parameters better than CMB+BAO+SNe, providing an independent cosmological probe to explore dark energy; (ii) combining the FRB data with gravitational-wave standard siren data from 10-year observation with the Einstein Telescope, the Hubble constant can be constrained to a sub-percent level, serving as a powerful low-redshift probe; (iii) using $10^6$ FRB data can constrain the baryon density $Ω_{\rm b}h$ to a precision of $\sim 0.1\%$. Our results indicate that SKA-era FRBs will provide precise cosmological measurements to shed light on both dark energy and the missing baryon problem, and help resolve the Hubble tension.

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arXiv2023

Eliminating polarization leakage effect for neutral hydrogen intensity mapping with deep learning

The neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping (IM) survey is regarded as a promising approach for cosmic large-scale structure (LSS) studies. A major issue for the HI IM survey is to remove the bright foreground contamination. A key to successfully remove the bright foreground is to well control or eliminate the instrumental effects. In this work, we consider the instrumental effect of polarization leakage and use the U-Net approach, a deep learning-based foreground removal technique, to eliminate the polarization leakage effect. The thermal noise is assumed to be a subdominant factor compared with the polarization leakage for future HI IM surveys and ignored in this analysis. In this method, the principal component analysis (PCA) foreground subtraction is used as a preprocessing step for the U-Net foreground subtraction. Our results show that the additional U-Net processing could either remove the foreground residual after the conservative PCA subtraction or compensate for the signal loss caused by the aggressive PCA preprocessing. Finally, we test the robustness of the U-Net foreground subtraction technique and show that it is still reliable in the case of existing constraint error on HI fluctuation amplitude.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2023

HI intensity mapping with MeerKAT: forecast for delay power spectrum measurement using interferometer mode

Neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping (IM) surveys are considered a promising tool for investigating the expansion history of the Universe. In this work, we explore the potential of MeerKAT HI IM observations in interferometer mode to estimate the power spectrum and constrain cosmological parameters within typical dark energy models. We employ an approach called the "delay spectrum," which allows us to separate the weak HI signal from foreground contamination in the frequency domain. Our findings indicate that the choice of survey fields significantly impacts the fractional errors on the power spectrum ($ΔP/P$) within a limited observational time of 10 hours. As the integration time increases from 10 hours to 10,000 hours, $ΔP/P$ progressively decreases until cosmic variance begins to dominate. For a total observation time of 10,000 hours, the lowest $ΔP/P$ at low $k$ can be achieved by tracking 100 points for MeerKAT L-band (900-1200 MHz) and 10 points for MeerKAT UHF-band (580-1000 MHz). Next, we assess the performance of HI IM in constraining typical dark energy models. We find that MeerKAT HI IM survey in interferometer mode demonstrates limited capability in constraining the dark-energy equation of state, even when combined with Planck data.

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arXiv2023

The foreground transfer function for HI intensity mapping signal reconstruction: MeerKLASS and precision cosmology applications

Blind cleaning methods are currently the preferred strategy for handling foreground contamination in single-dish HI intensity mapping surveys. Despite the increasing sophistication of blind techniques, some signal loss will be inevitable across all scales. Constructing a corrective transfer function using mock signal injection into the contaminated data has been a practice relied on for HI intensity mapping experiments. However, assessing whether this approach is viable for future intensity mapping surveys where precision cosmology is the aim, remains unexplored. In this work, using simulations, we validate for the first time the use of a foreground transfer function to reconstruct power spectra of foreground-cleaned low-redshift intensity maps and look to expose any limitations. We reveal that even when aggressive foreground cleaning is required, which causes ${>}\,50\%$ negative bias on the largest scales, the power spectrum can be reconstructed using a transfer function to within sub-percent accuracy. We specifically outline the recipe for constructing an unbiased transfer function, highlighting the pitfalls if one deviates from this recipe, and also correctly identify how a transfer function should be applied in an auto-correlation power spectrum. We validate a method that utilises the transfer function variance for error estimation in foreground-cleaned power spectra. Finally, we demonstrate how incorrect fiducial parameter assumptions (up to ${\pm}100\%$ bias) in the generation of mocks, used in the construction of the transfer function, do not significantly bias signal reconstruction or parameter inference (inducing ${<}\,5\%$ bias in recovered values).

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arXiv2023

Constraints on dark matter annihilation from the FAST observation of the Coma Berenices dwarf galaxy

The Galactic center $γ$-ray excess, detected by the Fermi-LAT, is a very attractive tentative signal from dark matter annihilation. Searching for associated synchrotron emissions can test the dark matter interpretation for this excess. We geared the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) towards Coma Berenices (a dwarf Spheroidal galaxy) for 2-hours of observation, and found no significant continuum radio emission, which could { put constraints on the dark matter annihilation cross section}, from our target. We set very stringent annihilation cross-section constraints, with roughly an order of magnitude improvement over a large range of masses compared with previous radio searches. The dark matter scenario for the Galactic center $γ$-ray excess is in tension with the FAST observation for reasonable choices of astrophysical factors. But considering the large uncertainty on astrophysical parameters, such as the magnetic field, the diffusion coefficient, and the diffusion radius, and on DM halo parameters, the dark matter interpretation for the excess could still survive. Further radio observations by the FAST and other radio telescopes may reveal more about the dark matter properties.

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arXiv2023

FAST drift scan survey for HI intensity mapping: I. preliminary data analysis

This work presents the initial results of the drift-scan observation for the neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping survey with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The data analyzed in this work were collected in night observations from 2019 through 2021. The primary findings are based on 28 hours of drift-scan observation carried out over seven nights in 2021, which covers $60\,{\rm deg}^2$ sky area. Our main findings are: (i) Our calibration strategy can successfully correct both the temporal and bandpass gain variation over the $4$-hour drift-scan observation. (ii) The continuum maps of the surveyed region are made with frequency resolution of $28$ kHz and pixel area of $2.95\,{\rm arcmin}^2$. The pixel noise levels of the continuum maps are slightly higher than the forecast assuming $T_{\rm sys}=20\,{\rm K}$, which are $36.0$ mK (for 10.0 s integration time) at the $1050$--$1150$ MHz band, and $25.9$ mK (for 16.7 s integration time) at the $1323$--$1450$ MHz band, respectively. (iii) The flux-weighted differential number count is consistent with the NRAO-VLA Sky Survey (NVSS) catalog down to the confusion limit $\sim7\,{\rm mJy}/{\rm beam}^{-1}$. (iv) The continuum flux measurements of the sources are consistent with that found in the literature. The difference in the flux measurement of $81$ isolated NVSS sources is about $6.3\%$. Our research offers a systematic analysis for the FAST HI intensity mapping drift-scan survey and serves as a helpful resource for further cosmology and associated galaxies sciences with the FAST drift-scan survey.

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arXiv2023

Detections of 21-cm absorption with a blind FAST survey at z $\leqslant$ 0.09

We present the early science results from a blind search of the extragalactic HI 21-cm absorption lines at z $\leqslant$ 0.09 with the drift-scan observation of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). We carried out the search using the data collected in 643.8 hours by the ongoing Commensal Radio Astronomy FasT Survey (CRAFTS), which spans a sky area of 3155 deg$^{2}$ and covers 44827 radio sources with a flux density greater than 12 mJy. Due to the radio frequency interference (RFI), only the relatively clean data in the frequency range of 1.3-1.45 GHz are used in the present work. Under the assumption of $T_{s}/c_{f}$ = 100 K, the total completeness-corrected comoving absorption path length spanned by our data and sensitive to Damped Lyman $α$ Absorbers (DLAs) are $ΔX^{inv}$ = 8.33$\times10^3$ ($Δz^{inv} = 7.81\times10^{3}$) for intervening absorption. For associated absorption, the corresponding values are $ΔX^{asc}$ = 12.8 ($Δz^{asc} = 11.9$). Three known HI absorbers (UGC 00613, 3C 293 and 4C +27.14) and two new HI absorbers (towards NVSS J231240-052547 and NVSS J053118+315412) are detected blindly. We fit the HI profiles with multi-components Gaussian functions and calculate the redshift (0.063, 0.066), width, flux density, optical depth and HI column densities for each absorption. Our results demonstrate the power of FAST in blindly searching HI absorbers. For absorption towards NVSS J231240-052547, the optical counterparts are faint and currently lack existing spectra. The most likely interpretation is that a radio-loud active galactic nucleus (AGN) is faint in the optical as the background source, with a faint optical absorber in between. NVSS J053118+315412 exhibits an associated absorption with a complex profile, which may suggest unsettled gas structures or gas accretion onto the supermassive black hole (SMBH).

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arXiv2023

Detecting HI Galaxies with Deep Neural Networks in the Presence of Radio Frequency Interference

In neutral hydrogen (HI) galaxy survey, a significant challenge is to identify and extract the HI galaxy signal from observational data contaminated by radio frequency interference (RFI). For a drift-scan survey, or more generally a survey of a spatially continuous region, in the time-ordered spectral data, the HI galaxies and RFI all appear as regions which extend an area in the time-frequency waterfall plot, so the extraction of the HI galaxies and RFI from such data can be regarded as an image segmentation problem, and machine learning methods can be applied to solve such problems. In this study, we develop a method to effectively detect and extract signals of HI galaxies based on a Mask R-CNN network combined with the PointRend method. By simulating FAST-observed galaxy signals and potential RFI impacts, we created a realistic data set for the training and testing of our neural network. We compared five different architectures and selected the best-performing one. This architecture successfully performs instance segmentation of HI galaxy signals in the RFI-contaminated time-ordered data (TOD), achieving a precision of 98.64% and a recall of 93.59%.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2023

Prospects for measuring dark energy with 21 cm intensity mapping experiments: A joint survey strategy

The 21 cm intensity mapping (IM) technique provides us with an efficient way to observe the cosmic large-scale structure (LSS). From the LSS data, one can use the baryon acoustic oscillation and redshift space distortion to trace the expansion and growth history of the universe, and thus measure the dark energy parameters. In this paper, we make a forecast for cosmological parameter estimation with the synergy of three 21 cm IM experiments. Specifically, we adopt a novel joint survey strategy, FAST ($0<z<0.35$)+SKA1-MID ($0.35<z<0.8$)+HIRAX ($0.8<z<2.5$), to measure dark energy. We simulate the 21 cm IM observations under the assumption of excellent foreground removal. We find that the synergy of three experiments could place quite tight constraints on cosmological parameters. For example, it provides $σ(Ω_{\rm m})=0.0039$ and $σ(H_0)=0.27\ \rm km\ s^{-1}\ Mpc^{-1}$ in the $Λ$CDM model. Notably, the synergy could break the cosmological parameter degeneracies when constraining the dynamical dark energy models. Concretely, the joint observation offers $σ(w)=0.019$ in the $w$CDM model, and $σ(w_0)=0.085$ and $σ(w_a)=0.32$ in the $w_0w_a$CDM model. These results are better than or equal to those given by CMB+BAO+SN. In addition, when the foreground removal efficiency is relatively low, the strategy still performs well. Therefore, the 21 cm IM joint survey strategy is promising and worth pursuing.

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arXiv2022

HI intensity mapping with MeerKAT: power spectrum detection in cross-correlation with WiggleZ galaxies

We present a detection of correlated clustering between MeerKAT radio intensity maps and galaxies from the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey. We find a $7.7σ$ detection of the cross-correlation power spectrum, the amplitude of which is proportional to the product of the HI density fraction ($Ω_{\rm HI}$), HI bias ($b_{\rm HI}$) and the cross-correlation coefficient ($r$). We therefore obtain the constraint $Ω_{\rm HI} b_{\rm HI} r\,{=}\,[0.86\,{\pm}\,0.10\,({\rm stat})\,{\pm}\,0.12\,({\rm sys})]\,{\times}\,10^{-3}$, at an effective scale of $k_{\rm eff}\,{\sim}\,0.13\,h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$. The intensity maps were obtained from a pilot survey with the MeerKAT telescope, a 64-dish pathfinder array to the SKA Observatory (SKAO). The data were collected from 10.5 hours of observations using MeerKAT's L-band receivers over six nights covering the 11hr field of WiggleZ, in the frequency range $1015-973\,{\rm MHz}$ (0.400$\,{<}\,z\,{<}\,$0.459 in redshift). This detection is the first practical demonstration of the multi-dish auto-correlation intensity mapping technique for cosmology. This marks an important milestone in the roadmap for the cosmology science case with the full SKAO.

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arXiv2022

Eliminating Primary Beam Effect in Foreground Subtraction of Neutral Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Survey with Deep Learning

In the neutral hydrogen (HI) intensity mapping (IM) survey, the foreground contamination on the cosmological signals is extremely severe, and the systematic effects caused by radio telescopes themselves further aggravate the difficulties in subtracting foreground. In this work, we investigate whether the deep learning method, concretely the 3D U-Net algorithm here, can play a crucial role in foreground subtraction when considering the systematic effect caused by the telescope's primary beam. We consider two beam models, i.e., the Gaussian beam model as a simple case and the Cosine beam model as a sophisticated case. The traditional principal component analysis (PCA) method is employed as a comparison and, more importantly, as the preprocessing step for the U-Net method to reduce the sky map dynamic range. We find that in the case of the Gaussian beam, the PCA method can effectively clean the foreground. However, the PCA method cannot handle the systematic effect induced by the Cosine beam, and the additional U-Net method can improve the result significantly. In order to show how well the PCA and U-Net methods can recover the HI signals, we also derive the HI angular power spectra, as well as the HI 2D power spectra, after performing the foreground subtractions. It is found that, in the case of Gaussian beam, the concordance with the original HI map using U-Net is better than that using PCA by $27.4\%$, and in the case of Cosine beam, the concordance using U-Net is better than that using PCA by $144.8\%$. Therefore, the U-Net based foreground subtraction can efficiently eliminate the telescope primary beam effect and shed new light on recovering the HI power spectrum for future HI IM experiments.

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arXiv2022

The Tianlai dish array low-z surveys forecasts

We present the science case for surveys with the Tianlai dish array interferometer tuned to the $\left[ 1300, 1400 \right] \mathrm{MHz}$ frequency range. Starting from a realistic generation of mock visibility data according to the survey strategy, we reconstruct a map of the sky and perform a foreground subtraction. We show that a survey of the North Celestial Polar cap during a year of observing time and covering an area of $150 \, \mathrm{deg^2}$ would reach a sensitivity of $ 1.5-2 \, \mathrm{mK} $ per $1 \, \mathrm{MHz} \times 0.25^2 \, \mathrm{deg^2 }$ voxel and be marginally impacted by mode-mixing. Tianlai would be able to detect a handful $(\sim 10)$ of nearby massive \HI clumps as well as a very strong cross-correlation signal of 21\,cm intensity maps with the North Celestial Cap Survey optical galaxies. We have also studied the performance of a mid-latitude survey, covering $\sim 1500 \, \mathrm{deg^2}$ centered on a declination of $δ=55^\circ$, which overlaps the Sloan Digital Sky Survey footprint. Despite a higher noise level for the mid-latitude survey, as well as significant distortions due to mode mixing, Tianlai would be able to detect a highly significant cross-correlation between the 21\,cm signal and the Sloan spectroscopic galaxy sample. Using the extragalactic signals from either or both of these surveys, it will be possible to assess the impact of calibration uncertainties, antenna pattern uncertainties, sources of noise, and mode mixing for future surveys requiring higher sensitivity.

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arXiv2022

Measurements of the diffuse Galactic synchrotron spectral index and curvature from MeerKLASS pilot data

21cm intensity mapping experiments are bringing an influx of high spectral resolution observational data in the $\sim100$ MHz $- 1$ GHz regime. We use pilot $971-1075$ MHz data from MeerKAT in single-dish mode, recently used to test the calibration and data reduction scheme of the upcoming MeerKLASS survey, to probe the spectral index of diffuse synchrotron emission below 1 GHz within $145^{\circ} < α< 180^{\circ}$, $-1^{\circ} < δ< 8^{\circ}$. Through comparisons with data from the OVRO Long Wavelength Array and the Maipu and MU surveys, we find an average spectral index of $-2.75 < β< -2.71$ between 45 and 1055 MHz. By fitting for spectral curvature with a spectral index of the form $β+ c \, {\rm{ln}}(ν/ 73~{\rm MHz})$, we measure $β= -2.55 \pm 0.13$ and $c = -0.12 \pm 0.05$ within our target field. Our results are in good agreement (within $1σ$) with existing measurements from experiments such as ARCADE2 and EDGES. These results show the calibration accuracy of current data and demonstrate that MeerKLASS will also be capable of achieving a secondary science goal of probing the interstellar medium.

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