Using member galaxy luminosities as halo mass proxies of galaxy groups

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that using the luminosity gap between brightest galaxies in a group significantly improves the accuracy of halo mass estimates, especially for small groups or bright magnitude cuts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method utilizing luminosity gaps to reduce halo mass estimation scatter, outperforming traditional ranking methods for small or bright galaxy groups.

Findings

Reduces halo mass estimation scatter by 50-70%.

Effective especially for groups with fewer than five members.

Performs better than traditional ranking methods in specific cases.

Abstract

Reliable halo mass estimation for a given galaxy system plays an important role both in cosmology and galaxy formation studies. Here we set out to find the way that can improve the halo mass estimation for those galaxy systems with limited brightest member galaxies been observed. Using four mock galaxy samples constructed from semi-analytical formation models, the subhalo abundance matching method and the conditional luminosity functions, respectively, we find that the luminosity gap between the brightest and the subsequent brightest member galaxies in a halo (group) can be used to significantly reduce the scatter in the halo mass estimation based on the luminosity of the brightest galaxy alone. Tests show that these corrections can significantly reduce the scatter in the halo mass estimations by $\sim 50\%$ to $\sim 70\%$ in massive halos depending on which member galaxies are considered. Comparing to the traditional ranking method, we find that this method works better for groups with less than five members, or in observations with very bright magnitude cut.