Conditional HI mass functions and the HI-to-halo mass relation in the local Universe

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to estimate galaxy HI mass using optical properties, calibrates it with the xGASS sample, and applies it to SDSS data to analyze the HI mass function and its relation to dark matter halos, revealing discrepancies with models.

Contribution

A novel HI mass estimator based on galaxy properties, calibrated with Bayesian inference, enabling statistical studies of HI content in galaxies and halos.

Findings

The HI mass function matches ALFALFA at high masses but shows higher amplitude at low masses.

Conditional HI mass functions follow a Schechter function across halo masses.

The HI-halo mass relation differs from predictions of current galaxy formation models.

Abstract

We present a new HI mass estimator which relates the HI-to-stellar mass ratio to four galaxy properties: stellar surface mass density, color index $u-r$, stellar mass and concentration index, with the scatter of individual galaxies around the mean HI mass modeled with a Gaussian distribution. We calibrate the estimator using the xGASS sample, including both HI detection and non-detection, and constrain the model parameters through Bayesian inferences. Tests with mock catalogs demonstrate that our estimator provides unbiased HI masses for optical samples like the SDSS, thus suitable for statistical studies of HI gas contents in galaxies and dark matter halos. We apply our estimator to the SDSS spectroscopic sample to estimate the local HI mass function (HIMF), the conditional HI mass function (CHIMF) in galaxy groups and the HI-halo mass (HIHM) relation. Our HIMF agrees with the ALFALFA measurements at $M_{HI}\gtrsim 5\times 10^9M_{\odot}$, but with higher amplitude and a steeper slope at lower masses. We show that this discrepancy is caused primarily by the cosmic variance which is corrected for the SDSS sample but not for the ALFALFA. The CHIMFs for all halo masses can be described by a single Schechter function, and this is true for red, blue and satellite galaxies. For central galaxies the CHIMFs show a double-Gaussian profile, with the two components contributed by the red and blue galaxies, respectively. The total HI mass in a group increases monotonically with halo mass. The HI mass of central galaxies in galaxy groups increases rapidly with halo mass only at $M_h\lesssim10^{12}M_{\odot}$, while the mass dependence becomes much weaker at higher halo masses. The observed HI-halo mass relation is not reproduced by current hydrodynamic simulations and semi-analytic models of galaxy formation.