Halo models of HI selected galaxies

TL;DR

This paper develops a novel halo model linking HI content in galaxies to optical properties, using SDSS data and radio surveys to predict clustering and inform future observations.

Contribution

It introduces a new statistical scaling relation between optical properties and HI mass, calibrated with SDSS and ALFALFA data, to model HI galaxy distribution.

Findings

Best-fit relation links massive HI galaxies to optically faint blue centrals.

Model predictions agree with observed HI-stellar mass relations.

Forecasts for future SKA and Euclid/LSST overlap observations.

Abstract

Modelling the distribution of neutral hydrogen (HI) in dark matter halos is important for studying galaxy evolution in the cosmological context. We use a novel approach to infer the HI-dark matter connection at the massive end ($m_{\rm HI} > 10^{9.8} M_{\odot}$) from radio HI emission surveys, using optical properties of low-redshift galaxies as an intermediary. In particular, we use a previously calibrated optical HOD describing the luminosity- and colour-dependent clustering of SDSS galaxies and describe the HI content using a statistical scaling relation between the optical properties and HI mass. This allows us to compute the abundance and clustering properties of HI-selected galaxies and compare with data from the ALFALFA survey. We apply an MCMC-based statistical analysis to constrain the free parameters related to the scaling relation. The resulting best-fit scaling relation identifies massive HI galaxies primarily with optically faint blue centrals, consistent with expectations from galaxy formation models. We compare the HI-stellar mass relation predicted by our model with independent observations from matched HI-optical galaxy samples, finding reasonable agreement. As a further application, we make some preliminary forecasts for future observations of HI and optical galaxies in the expected overlap volume of SKA and Euclid/LSST.