scholarly journals Limitations to the ‘basic’ HOD model and beyond

2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (4) ◽  
pp. 5506-5519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boryana Hadzhiyska ◽  
Sownak Bose ◽  
Daniel Eisenstein ◽  
Lars Hernquist ◽  
David N Spergel

ABSTRACT We use the IllustrisTNG cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations to test fundamental assumptions of the mass-based halo occupation distribution (HOD) approach to modelling the galaxy–halo connection. By comparing the clustering of galaxies measured in the 300 Mpc TNG box (TNG300) with that predicted by the standard (basic) HOD model, we find that, on average, the ‘basic’ HOD model underpredicts the real-space correlation function in the TNG300 box by ∼15 per cent on scales of $1 \,\,\lt\,\, r \,\,\lt\,\, 20 \ {\rm Mpc}\, h^{-1}$, which is well beyond the target precision demanded of next-generation galaxy redshift surveys. We perform several tests to establish the robustness of our findings to systematic effects, including the effect of finite box size and the choice of halo finder. In our exploration of ‘secondary’ parameters with which to augment the ‘basic’ HOD, we find that the local environment of the halo, the velocity dispersion anisotropy, β, and the product of the half-mass radius and the velocity dispersion, σ2Rhalfmass, are the three most effective measures of assembly bias that help reconcile the ‘basic’ HOD-predicted clustering with that in TNG300. In addition, we test other halo properties such as halo spin, formation epoch, and halo concentration. We also find that at fixed halo mass, galaxies in one type of environment cluster differently from galaxies in another. We demonstrate that a more complete model of the galaxy–halo connection can be constructed if we combine both mass and local environment information about the halo.

2019 ◽  
Vol 488 (4) ◽  
pp. 5580-5593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viraj Pandya ◽  
Joel Primack ◽  
Peter Behroozi ◽  
Avishai Dekel ◽  
Haowen Zhang ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Hubble Space Telescope observations show that low-mass ($M_*=10^9\!-\!10^{10}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$) galaxies at high redshift (z = 1.0–2.5) tend to be elongated (prolate) rather than disky (oblate) or spheroidal. This is explained in zoom-in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations by the fact that these galaxies are forming in cosmic web filaments where accretion happens preferentially along the direction of elongation. We ask whether the elongated morphology of these galaxies allows them to be used as effective tracers of cosmic web filaments at high redshift via their intrinsic alignments. Using mock light cones and spectroscopically confirmed galaxy pairs from the Cosmic Assembly Near-infared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), we test two types of alignments: (1) between the galaxy major axis and the direction to nearby galaxies of any mass and (2) between the major axes of nearby pairs of low-mass, likely prolate, galaxies. The mock light cones predict strong signals in 3D real space, 3D redshift space, and 2D projected redshift space for both types of alignments (assuming prolate galaxy orientations are the same as those of their host prolate haloes), but we do not detect significant alignment signals in CANDELS observations. However, we show that spectroscopic redshifts have been obtained for only a small fraction of highly elongated galaxies, and accounting for spectroscopic incompleteness and redshift errors significantly degrades the 2D mock signal. This may partly explain the alignment discrepancy and highlights one of several avenues for future work.


2021 ◽  
Vol 502 (3) ◽  
pp. 3599-3617
Author(s):  
Boryana Hadzhiyska ◽  
Sandro Tacchella ◽  
Sownak Bose ◽  
Daniel J Eisenstein

ABSTRACT We employ the hydrodynamical simulation IllustrisTNG-300-1 to explore the halo occupation distribution (HOD) and environmental dependence of luminous star-forming emission-line galaxies (ELGs) at z ∼ 1. Such galaxies are key targets for current and upcoming cosmological surveys. We select model galaxies through cuts in colour–colour space allowing for a direct comparison with the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) surveys and then compare them with galaxies selected based on specific star formation rate (sSFR) and stellar mass. We demonstrate that the ELG populations are twice more likely to reside in lower density regions (sheets) compared with the mass-selected populations and twice less likely to occupy the densest regions of the cosmic web (knots). We also show that the colour-selected and sSFR-selected ELGs exhibit very similar occupation and clustering statistics, finding that the agreement is best for lower redshifts. In contrast with the mass-selected sample, the occupation of haloes by a central ELG peaks at ∼20 per cent. We furthermore explore the dependence of the HOD and the autocorrelation on environment, noticing that at fixed halo mass, galaxies in high-density regions cluster about 10 times more strongly than low-density ones. This result suggests that we should model carefully the galaxy–halo relation and implement assembly bias effects into our models (estimated at ∼4 per cent of the clustering of the DESI colour-selected sample at z = 0.8). Finally, we apply a simple mock recipe to recover the clustering on large scales (r ≳ 1 Mpc h−1) to within 1 per cent by augmenting the HOD model with an environment dependence, demonstrating the power of adopting flexible population models.


2019 ◽  
Vol 488 (4) ◽  
pp. 4984-5013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank C van den Bosch ◽  
Johannes U Lange ◽  
Andrew R Zentner

ABSTRACT We present a Bayesian hierarchical inference formalism (Basilisk) to constrain the galaxy–halo connection using satellite kinematics. Unlike traditional methods, Basilisk does not resort to stacking the kinematics of satellite galaxies in bins of central luminosity, and does not make use of summary statistics, such as satellite velocity dispersion. Rather, Basilisk leaves the data in its raw form and computes the corresponding likelihood. In addition, Basilisk can be applied to flux-limited, rather than volume-limited samples, greatly enhancing the quantity and dynamic range of the data. And finally, Basilisk is the only available method that simultaneously solves for halo mass and orbital anisotropy of the satellite galaxies, while properly accounting for scatter in the galaxy–halo connection. Basilisk uses the conditional luminosity function to model halo occupation statistics, and assumes that satellite galaxies are a relaxed tracer population of the host halo’s potential with kinematics that obey the spherical Jeans equation. We test and validate Basilisk using mocks of varying complexity, and demonstrate that it yields unbiased constraints on the galaxy–halo connection and at a precision that rivals galaxy–galaxy lensing. In particular, Basilisk accurately recovers the full PDF of the relation between halo mass and central galaxy luminosity, and simultaneously constrains the orbital anisotropy of the satellite galaxies. Basilisk ’s inference is not affected by potential velocity bias of the central galaxies, or by slight errors in the inferred, radial profile of satellite galaxies that arise as a consequence of interlopers and sample impurity.


Author(s):  
Graziano Rossi ◽  
Peter D Choi ◽  
Jeongin Moon ◽  
Julian E Bautista ◽  
Hector Gil-Marín ◽  
...  

Abstract We develop a series of N-body data challenges, functional to the final analysis of the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) Data Release 16 (DR16) galaxy sample. The challenges are primarily based on high-fidelity catalogs constructed from the Outer Rim simulation – a large box size realization (3h−1Gpc) characterized by an unprecedented combination of volume and mass resolution, down to 1.85 · 109h−1M⊙. We generate synthetic galaxy mocks by populating Outer Rim halos with a variety of halo occupation distribution (HOD) schemes of increasing complexity, spanning different redshift intervals. We then assess the performance of three complementary redshift space distortion (RSD) models in configuration and Fourier space, adopted for the analysis of the complete DR16 eBOSS sample of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs). We find all the methods mutually consistent, with comparable systematic errors on the Alcock-Paczynski parameters and the growth of structure, and robust to different HOD prescriptions – thus validating the robustness of the models and the pipelines used for the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) and full shape clustering analysis. In particular, all the techniques are able to recover α∥ and α⊥ to within $0.9\%$, and fσ8 to within $1.5\%$. As a by-product of our work, we are also able to gain interesting insights on the galaxy-halo connection. Our study is relevant for the final eBOSS DR16 ‘consensus cosmology’, as the systematic error budget is informed by testing the results of analyses against these high-resolution mocks. In addition, it is also useful for future large-volume surveys, since similar mock-making techniques and systematic corrections can be readily extended to model for instance the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) galaxy sample.


2020 ◽  
Vol 641 ◽  
pp. A143
Author(s):  
Alessandro Sonnenfeld

Context. The stellar density profile of a galaxy is typically summarised with two numbers: the total stellar mass and half-light radius. The total mass of a galaxy, however, is not a well-defined quantity, due to the finite depth of photometric observations and the arbitrariness of the distinction between galaxy and diffuse intra-group light. This limits our ability to make accurate comparisons between models and observations. Aims. I wish to provide a more robust two-parameter description of the stellar density distribution of elliptical galaxies, in terms of quantities that can be measured unambiguously. Methods. I propose using the stellar mass enclosed within 10 kpc in projection, M*,10, and the mass-weighted stellar density slope within the same aperture, Γ*,10, for this purpose. I measured the distribution in M*,10 and Γ*,10 of a sample of elliptical galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey, using photometry from the Hyper Suprime-Cam survey. I measured, at fixed (M*,10, Γ*,10), what the spread is in the galaxy surface brightness profile and central stellar velocity dispersion within the sample. As a first application, I then compared the observed M*,10 − Γ*,10 relation of elliptical galaxies with that of similarly selected galaxies in the EAGLE REFERENCE simulation. Results. The pair of values of (M*,10, Γ*,10) can be used to predict the stellar density profile in the inner 10 kpc of a galaxy with better than 20% accuracy. Similarly, M*,10 and Γ*,10 can be combined to obtain a proxy for stellar velocity dispersion that is at least as good as the stellar mass fundamental plane. The average stellar density slope of EAGLE elliptical galaxies matches that of observed ones at M*,10 = 1011 M⊙ well, but the EAGLE M*,10 − Γ*,10 relation is shallower and has a larger intrinsic scatter compared to observations. Conclusions. This new parameterisation of the stellar density profile of massive elliptical galaxies provides a more robust way of comparing results from different photometric surveys and from hydrodynamical simulations, with respect to a description based on total stellar mass and half-light radius.


2019 ◽  
Vol 488 (3) ◽  
pp. 3541-3567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuan Wang ◽  
Yao-Yuan Mao ◽  
Andrew R Zentner ◽  
Frank C van den Bosch ◽  
Johannes U Lange ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Most models for the statistical connection between galaxies and their haloes ignore the possibility that galaxy properties may be correlated with halo properties other than halo mass, a phenomenon known as galaxy assembly bias. And yet, it is known that such correlations can lead to systematic errors in the interpretation of survey data that are analysed using traditional halo occupation models. At present, the degree to which galaxy assembly bias may be present in the real Universe, and the best strategies for constraining it remain uncertain. We study the ability of several observables to constrain galaxy assembly bias from redshift survey data using the decorated halo occupation distribution (dHOD), an empirical model of the galaxy–halo connection that incorporates assembly bias. We cover an expansive set of observables, including the projected two-point correlation function wp(rp), the galaxy–galaxy lensing signal ΔΣ(rp), the void probability function VPF(r), the distributions of counts-in-cylinders P(NCIC), and counts-in-annuli P(NCIA), and the distribution of the ratio of counts in cylinders of different sizes P(N2/N5). We find that despite the frequent use of the combination wp(rp) + ΔΣ(rp) in interpreting galaxy data, the count statistics, P(NCIC) and P(NCIA), are generally more efficient in constraining galaxy assembly bias when combined with wp(rp). Constraints based upon wp(rp) and ΔΣ(rp) share common degeneracy directions in the parameter space, while combinations of wp(rp) with the count statistics are more complementary. Therefore, we strongly suggest that count statistics should be used to complement the canonical observables in future studies of the galaxy–halo connection.


2009 ◽  
Vol 394 (3) ◽  
pp. 1631-1639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Arnalte-Mur ◽  
Alberto Fernández-Soto ◽  
Vicent J. Martínez ◽  
Enn Saar ◽  
Pekka Heinämäki ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 500 (1) ◽  
pp. 911-925
Author(s):  
Carlos M Correa ◽  
Dante J Paz ◽  
Ariel G Sánchez ◽  
Andrés N Ruiz ◽  
Nelson D Padilla ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Voids are promising cosmological probes. Nevertheless, every cosmological test based on voids must necessarily employ methods to identify them in redshift space. Therefore, redshift-space distortions (RSD) and the Alcock–Paczyński effect (AP) have an impact on the void identification process itself generating distortion patterns in observations. Using a spherical void finder, we developed a statistical and theoretical framework to describe physically the connection between the identification in real and redshift space. We found that redshift-space voids above the shot noise level have a unique real-space counterpart spanning the same region of space, they are systematically bigger and their centres are preferentially shifted along the line of sight. The expansion effect is a by-product of RSD induced by tracer dynamics at scales around the void radius, whereas the off-centring effect constitutes a different class of RSD induced at larger scales by the global dynamics of the whole region containing the void. The volume of voids is also altered by the fiducial cosmology assumed to measure distances, this is the AP change of volume. These three systematics have an impact on cosmological statistics. In this work, we focus on the void size function. We developed a theoretical framework to model these effects and tested it with a numerical simulation, recovering the statistical properties of the abundance of voids in real space. This description depends strongly on cosmology. Hence, we lay the foundations for improvements in current models of the abundance of voids in order to obtain unbiased cosmological constraints from redshift surveys.


1988 ◽  
Vol 126 ◽  
pp. 663-664
Author(s):  
G. Meylan

The southern sky gives us the great opportunity to observe two among the brightest and nearest globular clusters of the Galaxy: ω Cen and 47 Tuc. For these giant clusters, we present the comparison between observations and King-Michie multi-mass dynamical models with anisotropy in the velocity dispersion. A more comprehensive description of this work is to be published (Meylan 1986a,b).


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