Small- and intermediate-scale galaxy clustering can be used to establish the galaxy-halo connection to study galaxy formation and evolution and to tighten constraints on cosmological parameters. With the increasing precision of galaxy clustering meas
urements from ongoing and forthcoming large galaxy surveys, accurate models are required to interpret the data and extract relevant information. We introduce a method based on high-resolution N-body simulations to accurately and efficiently model the galaxy two-point correlation functions (2PCFs) in projected and redshift spaces. The basic idea is to tabulate all information of haloes in the simulations necessary for computing the galaxy 2PCFs within the framework of halo occupation distribution or conditional luminosity function. It is equivalent to populating galaxies to dark matter haloes and using the mock 2PCF measurements as the model predictions. Besides the accurate 2PCF calculations, the method is also fast and therefore enables an efficient exploration of the parameter space. As an example of the method, we decompose the redshift-space galaxy 2PCF into different components based on the type of galaxy pairs and show the redshift-space distortion effect in each component. The generalizations and limitations of the method are discussed.
(Abridged) We detect the large-scale structure of Lya emission in the Universe at redshifts z=2-3.5 by measuring the cross-correlation of Lya surface brightness with quasars in SDSS/BOSS. We use a million spectra targeting Luminous Red Galaxies at z<
0.8, after subtracting a best fit model galaxy spectrum from each one, as an estimate of the high-redshift Lya surface brightness. The quasar-Lya emission cross-correlation we detect has a shape consistent with a LambdaCDM model with Omega_M =0.30^+0.10-0.07. The predicted amplitude of this cross-correlation is proportional to the product of the mean Lya surface brightness, <mu_alpha>, the amplitude of mass fluctuations, and the quasar and Lya emission bias factors. Using known values, we infer <mu_alpha>(b_alpha/3) = (3.9 +/- 0.9) x 10^-21 erg/s cm^-2 A^-1 arcsec^-2, where b_alpha is the Lya emission bias factor. If the dominant sources of Lya emission are star forming galaxies, we infer rho_SFR = (0.28 +/- 0.07) (3/b_alpha) /yr/Mpc^3 at z=2-3.5. For b_alpha=3, this value is a factor of 21-35 above previous estimates from individually detected Lya emitters, although consistent with the total rho_SFR derived from dust-corrected, continuum UV surveys. 97% of the Lya emission in the Universe at these redshifts is therefore undetected in previous surveys of Lya emitters. Our measurement is much greater than seen from stacking analyses of faint halos surrounding previously detected Lya emitters, but we speculate that it arises from similar Lya halos surrounding all luminous star-forming galaxies. We also detect redshift space anisotropy of the quasar-Lya emission cross-correlation, finding evidence at the 3.0 sigma level that it is radially elongated, consistent with distortions caused by radiative-transfer effects (Zheng et al. (2011)). Our measurements represent the first application of the intensity mapping technique to optical observations.
Ly$alpha$ photons scattered by neutral hydrogen atoms in the circumgalactic media or produced in the halos of star-forming galaxies are expected to lead to extended Ly$alpha$ emission around galaxies. Such low surface brightness Ly$alpha$ halos (LAHs
) have been detected by stacking Ly$alpha$ images of high-redshift star-forming galaxies. We study the origin of LAHs by performing radiative transfer modeling of nine $z=3.1$ Lyman-Alpha Emitters (LAEs) in a high resolution hydrodynamic cosmological galaxy formation simulation. We develop a method of computing the mean Ly$alpha$ surface brightness profile of each LAE by effectively integrating over many different observing directions. Without adjusting any parameters, our model yields an average Ly$alpha$ surface brightness profile in remarkable agreement with observations. We find that observed LAHs cannot be accounted for solely by photons originating from the central LAE and scattered to large radii by hydrogen atoms in the circumgalactic gas. Instead, Ly$alpha$ emission from regions in the outer halo is primarily responsible for producing the extended LAHs seen in observations, which potentially includes both star-forming and cooling radiation. With the limit on the star formation contribution set by the ultra-violet (UV) halo measurement, we find that cooling radiation can play an important role in forming the extended LAHs. We discuss the implications and caveats of such a picture.
We report the first hypervelocity star (HVS) discovered from the LAMOST spectroscopic survey. It is a B-type star with a heliocentric radial velocity about 620 km/s, which projects to a Galactocentric radial velocity component of ~477 km/s. With a he
liocentric distance of ~13 kpc and an apparent magnitude of ~13 mag, it is the nearest bright HVS currently known. With a mass of ~9Msun, it is one of the three most massive HVSs discovered so far. The star is clustered on the sky with many other known HVSs, with the position suggesting a possible connection to Galactic center structures. With the current poorly-determined proper motion, a Galactic center origin of this HVS remains consistent with the data at the 1sigma level, while a disk run-away origin cannot be excluded. We discuss the potential of the LAMOST survey to discover a large statistical sample of HVSs of different types.
We investigate the luminosity and colour dependence of clustering of CMASS galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Tenth Data Release. The halo occupation distribution framework is adopted to model the pro
jected two-point correlation function measurements on small and intermediate scales (from $0.02$ to $60,h^{-1}{rm {Mpc}}$) and to interpret the observed trends and infer the connection of galaxies to dark matter halos. We find that luminous red galaxies reside in massive halos of mass $M{sim}10^{13}$--$10^{14},h^{-1}{rm M_odot}$ and more luminous galaxies are more clustered and hosted by more massive halos. The strong small-scale clustering requires a fraction of these galaxies to be satellites in massive halos, with the fraction at the level of 5--8 per cent and decreasing with luminosity. The characteristic mass of a halo hosting on average one satellite galaxy above a luminosity threshold is about a factor $8.7$ larger than that of a halo hosting a central galaxy above the same threshold. At a fixed luminosity, progressively redder galaxies are more strongly clustered on small scales, which can be explained by having a larger fraction of these galaxies in the form of satellites in massive halos. Our clustering measurements on scales below $0.4,h^{-1}{rm {Mpc}}$ allow us to study the small-scale spatial distribution of satellites inside halos. While the clustering of luminosity-threshold samples can be well described by a Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profile, that of the reddest galaxies prefers a steeper or more concentrated profile. Finally, we also use galaxy samples of constant number density at different redshifts to study the evolution of luminous galaxies, and find the clustering to be consistent with passive evolution in the redshift range of $0.5 lesssim z lesssim 0.6$.
We use 12000 stars from Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) spectroscopic data to show that the metallicities of Kepler field stars as given in the Kepler Input Catalog (KIC) systematically underestimate both the true m
etallicity and the dynamic range of the Kepler sample. Specifically, to the first order approximation, we find [Fe/H]_KIC = -0.20 + 0.43 [Fe/H]_LAMOST, with a scatter of ~0.25 dex, due almost entirely to errors in KIC. This relation is most secure for -0.3<[Fe/H]_LAMOST<+0.4 where we have >200 comparison stars per 0.1 dex bin and good consistency is shown between metallicities determined by LAMOST and high-resolution spectra. It remains approximately valid in a slightly broader range. When the relation is inverted, the error in true metallicity as derived from KIC is (0.25 dex)/0.43~0.6 dex. We thereby quantitatively confirm the cautionary note by Brown et al. (2011) that KIC estimates of [Fe/H] should not be used by anyone with a particular interest in stellar metallicities. Fortunately, many more LAMOST spectroscopic metallicities will be available in the near future.
As a result of resonant scatterings off hydrogen atoms, Lyman-alpha (Lya) emission from star-forming galaxies provides a probe of the (hardly isotropic) neutral gas environment around them. We study the effect of the environmental anisotropy on the o
bserved Lya emission by performing radiative transfer calculations for models of neutral hydrogen clouds with prescriptions of spatial and kinematic anisotropies. The environmental anisotropy leads to corresponding anisotropy in the Lya flux and spectral properties and induces correlations among them. The Lya flux (or observed luminosity) depends on the viewing angle and shows an approximate correlation with the initial Lya optical depth in the viewing direction relative to those in all other directions. The distribution of Lya flux from a set of randomly oriented clouds is skewed to high values, providing a natural contribution to the Lya equivalent width (EW) distribution seen in observation. A narrower EW distribution is found at a larger peak offset of the Lya line, similar to the trend suggested in observation. The peak offset appears to correlate with the line shape (full width at half maximum and asymmetry), pointing to a possibility of using Lya line features alone to determine the systemic redshifts of galaxies. The study suggests that anisotropies in the spatial and kinematic distributions of neutral hydrogen can be an important ingredient in shaping the observed properties of Lya emission from star-forming galaxies. We discuss the implications of using Lya emission to probe the circumgalactic and intergalactic environments of galaxies.
We develop a model for the distribution of the ISM and star formation in galaxies based on recent studies that indicate that galactic disks stabilise to a constant stability parameter, which we combine with prescriptions of how the phases of the ISM
are determined and for the Star Formation Law (SFL). The model predicts the gas surface mass density and star formation intensity of a galaxy given its rotation curve, stellar surface mass density and the gas velocity dispersion. This model is tested on radial profiles of neutral and molecular ISM surface mass density and star formation intensity of 12 galaxies selected from the THINGS sample. Our tests focus on intermediate radii. Nevertheless, the model produces reasonable agreement with ISM mass and star formation rate integrated over the central region in all but one case. To optimise the model, we evaluate four recipes for the stability parameter, three recipes for apportioning the ISM into molecular and neutral components, and eig
We derive the projected surface mass distribution Sigma_M for spherically symmetric mass distributions having an arbitrary rotation curve. For a galaxy with a flat rotation curve and an ISM disk having a constant Toomre stability parameter, Q, the IS
M surface mass density Sigma_g as well as Sigma_M both fall off as 1/R. We use published data on a sample of 20 well studied galaxies to show that ISM disks do maintain a constant Q over radii usually encompassing more than 50% of the HI mass. The power law slope in Sigma_g covers a range of exponents and is well correlated with the slope in the epicyclic frequency. This implies that the ISM disk is responding to the potential, and hence that secular evolution is important for setting the structure of ISM disks. We show that the gas to total mass ratio should be anti-correlated with the maximum rotational velocity, and that the sample falls on the expected relationship. A very steep fall off in Sigma_g is required at the outermost radii to keep the mass and angular momentum content finite for typical rotation curve shapes, and is observed. The observation that HI traces dark matter over a significant range of radii in galaxies is thus due to the disks stabilising themselves in a normal dark matter dominated potential. This explanation is consistent with the cold dark matter paradigm.
We measure the luminosity and color dependence and the redshift evolution of galaxy clustering in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Ninth Data Release. We focus on the projected two-point correlation function (2
PCF) of subsets of its CMASS sample, which includes about 260,000 galaxies over ~3,300 sq. deg in the redshift range 0.43<z<0.7. To minimize the selection effect on galaxy clustering, we construct well-defined luminosity and color subsamples by carefully accounting for the CMASS galaxy selection cuts. The 2PCF of the whole CMASS sample, if approximated by a power-law, has a correlation length of r_0=7.93pm0.06Mpc/h and an index of gamma=1.85pm0.01. Clear dependences on galaxy luminosity and color are found for the projected 2PCF in all redshift bins, with more luminous and redder galaxies generally exhibiting stronger clustering and steeper 2PCF. The color dependence is also clearly seen for galaxies within the red sequence, consistent with the behavior of SDSS-II main sample galaxies at lower redshifts. At a given luminosity (k+e corrected), no significant evolution of the projected 2PCFs with redshift is detected for red sequence galaxies. We also construct galaxy samples of fixed number density at different redshifts, using redshift-dependent magnitude thresholds. The clustering of these galaxies in the CMASS redshift range is found to be consistent with that predicted by passive evolution. Our measurements of the luminosity and color dependence and redshift evolution of galaxy clustering will allow for detailed modeling of the relation between galaxies and dark matter halos and new constraints on galaxy formation and evolution.
