Modeling color-dependent galaxy clustering in cosmological simulations

TL;DR

This paper extends the subhalo abundance matching method to assign galaxy colors based on secondary subhalo properties, successfully reproducing observed galaxy clustering and lensing signals without baryonic physics.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach using local dark matter density as a proxy for galaxy color, enhancing the modeling of color-dependent galaxy clustering in cosmological simulations.

Findings

The model accurately reproduces observed galaxy two-point correlation functions.

Using local dark matter density improves agreement with galaxy-galaxy lensing data.

Scatter in the density-color relation enhances model accuracy.

Abstract

We extend the subhalo abundance matching method to assign galaxy color to subhalos. We separate a luminosity-binned subhalo sample into two groups by a secondary subhalo property which is presumed to be correlated with galaxy color. The two subsamples then represent red and blue galaxy populations. We explore two models for the secondary property, namely subhalo assembly time and local dark matter density around each subhalo. The model predictions for the galaxy two-point correlation functions are compared with the recent results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We show that the observed color dependence of galaxy clustering can be reproduced well by our method applied to cosmological N-body simulations without baryonic processes. We then compare the model predictions for the color-dependent galaxy-mass cross correlation functions with the results from gravitational lensing observations. The comparison allows us to distinguish the models, and also to discuss what subhalo property should be used to assign color to subhalos accurately. We show that the extended abundance matching method using the local dark matter density as a color proxy provides an accurate description of the galaxy populations in the local universe. We also study impacts of scatter in the local dark matter density-color relations. Introducing scatter improves agreements of our model predictions with the observed red and blue galaxy clustering and is needed to explain observed correlation functions in finer color bins. Finally, we study red galaxy fraction profiles in galaxy group- and cluster-sized halos and find the red fraction profiles have a relatively strong dependence on our model parameters. We argue that the red fraction profiles can be an important observational clue, in addition to galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing, to explore the galaxy-(sub)halo connections.