An Empirical Model For Intrinsic Alignments: Insights From Cosmological Simulations

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Van Alfen, Nicholas, Campbell, Duncan, Blazek, Jonathan, Leonard, C. Danielle, Lanusse, Francois, Hearin, Andrew, Mandelbaum, Rachel, Collaboration, The LSST Dark Energy Science
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2023
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author Van Alfen, Nicholas
Campbell, Duncan
Blazek, Jonathan
Leonard, C. Danielle
Lanusse, Francois
Hearin, Andrew
Mandelbaum, Rachel
Collaboration, The LSST Dark Energy Science
author_facet Van Alfen, Nicholas
Campbell, Duncan
Blazek, Jonathan
Leonard, C. Danielle
Lanusse, Francois
Hearin, Andrew
Mandelbaum, Rachel
Collaboration, The LSST Dark Energy Science
contents We extend current models of the halo occupation distribution (HOD) to include a flexible, empirical framework for the forward modeling of the intrinsic alignment (IA) of galaxies. A primary goal of this work is to produce mock galaxy catalogs for the purpose of validating existing models and methods for the mitigation of IA in weak lensing measurements. This technique can also be used to produce new, simulation-based predictions for IA and galaxy clustering. Our model is probabilistically formulated, and rests upon the assumption that the orientations of galaxies exhibit a correlation with their host dark matter (sub)halo orientation or with their position within the halo. We examine the necessary components and phenomenology of such a model by considering the alignments between (sub)halos in a cosmological dark matter only simulation. We then validate this model for a realistic galaxy population in a set of simulations in the IllustrisTNG suite. We create an HOD mock with TNG-like correlations using our method, constraining the associated IA model parameters, with the $χ^2_{\rm dof}$ between our model's correlations and those of Illustris matching as closely as 1.4 and 1.1 for orientation--position and orientation--orientation correlation functions, respectively. By modeling the misalignment between galaxies and their host halo, we show that the 3-dimensional two-point position and orientation correlation functions of simulated (sub)halos and galaxies can be accurately reproduced from quasi-linear scales down to $0.1~h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$. We also find evidence for environmental influence on IA within a halo. Our publicly-available software provides a key component enabling efficient determination of Bayesian posteriors on IA model parameters using observational measurements of galaxy-orientation correlation functions in the highly nonlinear regime.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_07374
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle An Empirical Model For Intrinsic Alignments: Insights From Cosmological Simulations
Van Alfen, Nicholas
Campbell, Duncan
Blazek, Jonathan
Leonard, C. Danielle
Lanusse, Francois
Hearin, Andrew
Mandelbaum, Rachel
Collaboration, The LSST Dark Energy Science
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
We extend current models of the halo occupation distribution (HOD) to include a flexible, empirical framework for the forward modeling of the intrinsic alignment (IA) of galaxies. A primary goal of this work is to produce mock galaxy catalogs for the purpose of validating existing models and methods for the mitigation of IA in weak lensing measurements. This technique can also be used to produce new, simulation-based predictions for IA and galaxy clustering. Our model is probabilistically formulated, and rests upon the assumption that the orientations of galaxies exhibit a correlation with their host dark matter (sub)halo orientation or with their position within the halo. We examine the necessary components and phenomenology of such a model by considering the alignments between (sub)halos in a cosmological dark matter only simulation. We then validate this model for a realistic galaxy population in a set of simulations in the IllustrisTNG suite. We create an HOD mock with TNG-like correlations using our method, constraining the associated IA model parameters, with the $χ^2_{\rm dof}$ between our model's correlations and those of Illustris matching as closely as 1.4 and 1.1 for orientation--position and orientation--orientation correlation functions, respectively. By modeling the misalignment between galaxies and their host halo, we show that the 3-dimensional two-point position and orientation correlation functions of simulated (sub)halos and galaxies can be accurately reproduced from quasi-linear scales down to $0.1~h^{-1}{\rm Mpc}$. We also find evidence for environmental influence on IA within a halo. Our publicly-available software provides a key component enabling efficient determination of Bayesian posteriors on IA model parameters using observational measurements of galaxy-orientation correlation functions in the highly nonlinear regime.
title An Empirical Model For Intrinsic Alignments: Insights From Cosmological Simulations
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.07374