An Optimal Estimator of Intrinsic Alignments for Star-forming Galaxies in IllustrisTNG Simulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fixed-aperture shape estimator for star-forming galaxies that effectively detects intrinsic alignments in simulations, enabling better use of ELGs in cosmological studies.

Contribution

The authors develop and validate a new shape estimator for ELGs that improves intrinsic alignment detection in simulations, especially at high redshift.

Findings

Significant detection of IA power spectrum up to z=2

Estimator outperforms standard methods in small simulation volumes

Potential to enhance cosmological analyses with ELG IA measurements

Abstract

Emission line galaxies (ELGs), more generally star-forming galaxies, are valuable tracers of large-scale structure and therefore main targets of upcoming wide-area spectroscopic galaxy surveys. We propose a fixed-aperture shape estimator of each ELG for extracting the intrinsic alignment (IA) signal, and assess the performance of the method using image simulations of ELGs generated from the IllustrisTNG simulation including observational effects such as the sky background noise. We show that our method enables a significant detection of the IA power spectrum with the linear-scale coefficient $A_{\rm IA}\simeq (13$--$15)\pm 3.0$ up to $z=2$, even from the small simulation volume $\sim0.009\,(h^{-1}{\rm Gpc})^3$, in contrast to the null detection with the standard method. Thus the ELG IA signal, measured with our method, opens up opportunities to exploit cosmology and galaxy physics in high-redshift universe.