No Arabic abstract
We extend the Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) framework to generate mock galaxy catalogs exhibiting varying levels of galactic conformity, which has emerged as a potentially powerful probe of environmental effects in galaxy evolution. Our model correlates galaxy colours in a group with the concentration of the common parent dark halo through a group quenching efficiency $rho$ which makes older, more concentrated halos $textit{at fixed mass}$ preferentially host redder galaxies. We find that, for a specific value of $rho$, this 1-halo conformity matches corresponding measurements in a group catalog based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our mocks also display conformity at large separations from isolated objects, potentially an imprint of halo assembly bias. A detailed study - using mocks with assembly bias erased while keeping 1-halo conformity intact - reveals a rather nuanced situation, however. At separations $lesssim 4$Mpc, conformity is mainly a 1-halo effect dominated by the largest halos and is $textit{not}$ a robust indicator of assembly bias. Only at very large separations ($gtrsim 8$Mpc) does genuine 2-halo conformity, driven by the assembly bias of small halos, manifest distinctly. We explain all these trends in standard Halo Model terms. Our model opens the door to parametrized HOD analyses that self-consistently account for galactic conformity at all scales.
Halo bias is the main link between the matter distribution and dark matter halos. In its simplest form, halo bias is determined by halo mass, but there are known additional dependencies on other halo properties which are of consequence for accurate modeling of galaxy clustering. Here we present the most precise measurement of these secondary-bias dependencies on halo age, concentration, and spin, for a wide range of halo masses spanning from 10$^{10.7}$ to 10$^{14.7}$ $h^{-1}$ M$_{odot}$. At the high-mass end, we find no strong evidence of assembly bias for masses above M$_{vir}$ $sim10^{14}$ $h^{-1}$ M$_{odot}$. Secondary bias exists, however, for halo concentration and spin, up to cluster-size halos, in agreement with previous findings. For halo spin, we report, for the first time, two different regimes: above M$_{vir}sim$10$^{11.5}$ $h^{-1}$ M$_{odot}$, halos with larger values of spin have larger bias, at fixed mass, with the effect reaching almost a factor 2. This trend reverses below this characteristic mass. In addition to these results, we test, for the first time, the performance of a multi-tracer method for the determination of the relative bias between different subsets of halos. We show that this method increases significantly the signal-to-noise of the secondary-bias measurement as compared to a traditional approach. This analysis serves as the basis for follow-up applications of our multi-tracer method to real data.
We carry out a systematic investigation of the total mass density profile of massive (Mstar>2e11 Msun) early-type galaxies and its dependence on galactic properties and host halo mass with the aid of a variety of lensing/dynamical data and large mock galaxy catalogs. The latter are produced via semi-empirical models that, by design, are based on just a few basic input assumptions. Galaxies, with measured stellar masses, effective radii and S{e}rsic indices, are assigned, via abundance matching relations, host dark matter halos characterized by a typical LCDM profile. Our main results are as follows: (i) In line with observational evidence, our semi-empirical models naturally predict that the total, mass-weighted density slope at the effective radius gamma is not universal, steepening for more compact and/or massive galaxies, but flattening with increasing host halo mass. (ii) Models characterized by a Salpeter or variable initial mass function and uncontracted dark matter profiles are in good agreement with the data, while a Chabrier initial mass function and/or adiabatic contractions/expansions of the dark matter halos are highly disfavored. (iii) Currently available data on the mass density profiles of very massive galaxies (Mstar>1e12 Msun), with Mhalo>3e14 Msun, favor instead models with a stellar profile flatter than a S{e}rsic one in the very inner regions (r<3-5 kpc), and a cored NFW or Einasto dark matter profile with median halo concentration a factor of ~2 or <1.3, respectively, higher than those typically predicted by N-body numerical simulations.
We develop a new Multi-Tracer Halo Occupation Distribution (texttt{MTHOD}) framework for the galaxy distribution and apply it to the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) final data between $z=0.7-1.1$. We obtain a best fit mthod, for each tracer and describe the host halo properties of these galaxies. The mean halo masses for LRGs, ELGs and QSOs are found to be $1.9 times 10^{13} msolaroh$, $1.1 times 10^{12} msolaroh$ and $5 times 10^{12} msolaroh$ respectively in the eBOSS data. We use the texttt{MTHOD} framework to create mock galaxy catalogues and predict auto- and cross-correlation functions for all the tracers. Comparing these results with data, we investigate galactic conformity, the phenomenon whereby the properties of neighbouring galaxies are mutually correlated in a manner that is not captured by the basic halo model. We detect textsl{1-halo} conformity at more than 3$sigma$ statistical significance, while obtaining upper limit on textsl{2-halo} conformity. We also look at the environmental dependence of the galaxy quenching efficiency and find that halo mass driven quenching successfully explains the behaviour in high density regions, but it fails to describe the quenching efficiency in low density regions. In particular, we show that the quenching efficiency in low density filaments is higher in the observed data, as compared to the prediction of the mthod with halo mass driven quenching. The mock galaxy catalogue constructed in this paper is publicly available on https://www.roe.ac.uk/~salam/MTHOD/ .
Galaxy scaling laws, such as the Tully-Fisher, mass-size and Fall relations, can provide extremely useful clues on our understanding of galaxy formation in a cosmological context. Some of these relations are extremely tight and well described by one single parameter (mass), despite the theoretical existence of secondary parameters such as spin and concentration, which are believed to impact these relations. In fact, the residuals of these scaling laws appear to be almost uncorrelated with each other, posing significant constraints on models where secondary parameters play an important role. Here, we show that a possible solution is that such secondary parameters are correlated amongst themselves, in a way that removes correlations in observable space. In particular, we focus on how the existence of an anti-correlation between the dark matter halo spin and its concentration -- which is still debated in simulations -- can weaken the correlation of the residuals of the Tully-Fisher and mass-size relations. Interestingly, using simple analytic galaxy formation models, we find that this happens only for a relatively small portion of the parameter space that we explored, which suggests that this idea could be used to derive constraints to galaxy formation models that are still unexplored.
It is widely reported, based on clustering measurements of observed active galactic nuclei (AGN) samples, that AGN reside in similar mass host dark matter halos across the bulk of cosmic time, with log $M/M_odot$~12.5-13.0 to z~2.5. We show that this is due in part to the AGN fraction in galaxies rising with increasing stellar mass, combined with AGN observational selection effects that exacerbate this trend. Here, we use AGN specific accretion rate distribution functions determined as a function of stellar mass and redshift for star-forming and quiescent galaxies separately, combined with the latest galaxy-halo connection models, to determine the parent and sub-halo mass distribution function of AGN to various observational limits. We find that while the median (sub-)halo mass of AGN, $approx10^{12}M_odot$, is fairly constant with luminosity, specific accretion rate, and redshift, the full halo mass distribution function is broad, spanning several orders of magnitude. We show that widely used methods to infer a typical dark matter halo mass based on an observed AGN clustering amplitude can result in biased, systematically high host halo masses. While the AGN satellite fraction rises with increasing parent halo mass, we find that the central galaxy is often not an AGN. Our results elucidate the physical causes for the apparent uniformity of AGN host halos across cosmic time and underscore the importance of accounting for AGN selection biases when interpreting observational AGN clustering results. We further show that AGN clustering is most easily interpreted in terms of the relative bias to galaxy samples, not from absolute bias measurements alone.