Evolution of the Clustering of Photometrically Selected SDSS Galaxies

Abstract

We measure the angular auto-correlation functions (w) of SDSS galaxies selected to have photometric redshifts 0.1 < z < 0.4 and absolute r-band magnitudes Mr < -21.2. We split these galaxies into five overlapping redshift shells of width 0.1 and measure w in each subsample in order to investigate the evolution of SDSS galaxies. We find that the bias increases substantially with redshift - much more so than one would expect for a passively evolving sample. We use halo-model analysis to determine the best-fit halo-occupation-distribution (HOD) for each subsample, and the best-fit models allow us to interpret the change in bias physically. In order to properly interpret our best-fit HODs, we convert each halo mass to its z = 0 passively evolved bias (bo), enabling a direct comparison of the best-fit HODs at different redshifts. We find that the minimum halo bo required to host a galaxy decreases as the redshift decreases, suggesting that galaxies with Mr < -21.2 are forming in halos at the low-mass end of the HODs over our redshift range. We use the best-fit HODs to determine the change in occupation number divided by the change in mass of halos with constant bo and we find a sharp peak at bo ~ 0.9 - corresponding to an average halo mass of ~ 10^12Msol/h. We thus present the following scenario: the bias of galaxies with Mr < -21.2 decreases as the Universe evolves because these galaxies form in halos of mass ~ 10^12Msol/h (independent of redshift), and the bias of these halos naturally decreases as the Universe evolves.

arXiv comment17 pages, 14 figures, matches version accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (37)

• A Universal Density Profile from Hierarchical Clustering
• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Stable clustering, the halo model and nonlinear cosmological power spectra
• Halo Models of Large Scale Structure
• Ellipsoidal collapse and an improved model for the number and spatial distribution of dark matter haloes
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Photometric Camera
• Mass function of dark matter halos
• Color Separation of Galaxy Types in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Imaging Data
• The Galaxy Luminosity Function and Luminosity Density at Redshift z=0.1
• Halo occupation numbers and galaxy bias
• The Dark Side of the Halo Occupation Distribution
• Theoretical Models of the Halo Occupation Distribution: Separating Central and Satellite Galaxies
• The Luminosity and Color Dependence of the Galaxy Correlation Function
• How do galaxies populate Dark Matter halos?
• Galaxy Evolution from Halo Occupation Distribution Modeling of DEEP2 and SDSS Galaxy Clustering
• The properties and luminosity function of extremely low luminosity galaxies
• Statistical Analysis of Galaxy Surveys - I. Robust error estimation for 2-point clustering statistics
• On the Mass-to-Light Ratio of Large Scale Structure
• New Relationships between Galaxy Properties and Host Halo Mass, and the Role of Feedbacks in Galaxy Formation
• On Departures From a Power Law in the Galaxy Correlation Function
• Galaxy Formation and Large-Scale Bias
• Analysis of Systematic Effects and Statistical Uncertainties in Angular Clustering of Galaxies from Early SDSS Data
• Galaxy Zoo: Disentangling the Environmental Dependence of Morphology and Colour
• The time-evolution of bias
• Red Galaxy Growth and the Halo Occupation Distribution
• Clustering Analyses of 300,000 Photometrically Classified Quasars--I. Luminosity and Redshift Evolution in Quasar Bias
• A Halo Model of Galaxy Colors and Clustering in the SDSS
• The SDSS DR6 Luminosity Functions of Galaxies
• Galaxy Zoo: Dust in Spirals
• An algorithm for the direct reconstruction of the dark matter correlation function from weak lensing and galaxy clustering
• Angular Clustering with Photometric Redshifts in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Bimodality in the Clustering Properties of Galaxies
• The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO survey: evolution of the clustering of luminous red galaxies since z = 0.6
• Void Statistics in Large Galaxy Redshift Surveys: Does Halo Occupation of Field Galaxies Depend on Environment?
• Halo-model signatures from 380,000 SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies with photometric redshifts
• Halo-model Analysis of the Clustering of Photometrically Selected Galaxies from SDSS
• A Robust Estimator of the Small-Scale Galaxy Correlation Function
• Higher-Order Angular Galaxy Correlations in the SDSS: Redshift and Color Dependence of non-Linear Bias

Cited by in corpus (29)

• Galaxy Clustering in the Completed SDSS Redshift Survey: The Dependence on Color and Luminosity
• Galaxy Assembly Bias: A Significant Source of Systematic Error in the Galaxy-Halo Relationship
• Ameliorating Systematic Uncertainties in the Angular Clustering of Galaxies: A Study using SDSS-III
• Galaxy clustering in the NEWFIRM Medium Band Survey: the relationship between stellar mass and dark matter halo mass at 1 < z < 2
• The clustering of galaxies at z~0.5 in the SDSS-III Data Release 9 BOSS-CMASS sample: a test for the LCDM cosmology
• Beyond Halo Mass: Galactic Conformity as a Smoking Gun of Central Galaxy Assembly Bias
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: modeling of the luminosity and colour dependence in the Data Release 10
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Luminosity and Color Dependence and Redshift Evolution
• PRIMUS: Galaxy Clustering as a Function of Luminosity and Color at 0.2<z<1
• Dark matter searches in the gamma-ray extragalactic background via cross-correlations with galaxy catalogues
• The SDSS Galaxy Angular Two-Point Correlation Function
• The Scale-Dependence of Halo Assembly Bias
• A Cosmic Coincidence: The Power-Law Galaxy Correlation Function
• The evolution of clustering length, large-scale bias and host halo mass at 2<z<5 in the VIMOS Ultra Deep Survey (VUDS)
• Measuring Redshift-Space Distortions using Photometric Surveys
• The progenitors of present-day massive red galaxies up to z ~ 0.7 - finding passive galaxies using SDSS-I/II and SDSS-III
• The evolution of the galaxy content of dark matter haloes
• Search for primordial non-Gaussianity in the quasars of SDSS-III BOSS DR9
• Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Colour and luminosity dependent clustering from calibrated photometric redshifts
• Clustering analysis of high-redshift Luminous Red Galaxies in Stripe 82
• Understanding the faint red galaxy population using large-scale clustering measurements from SDSS DR7
• The Spitzer South Pole Telescope Deep Field Survey: Linking galaxies and halos at z=1.5
• Photometric redshifts for the Pan-STARRS1 survey
• Clustering of Extremely Red Objects in Elais-N1 from the UKIDSS DXS with optical photometry from Pan-STARRS1 and Subaru
• Linking galaxies to dark matter haloes at $z\sim 1$ : dependence of galaxy clustering on stellar mass and specific star formation rate
• Angular clustering of z~2 star-forming and passive galaxies in 2.5 square degrees of deep CFHT imaging
• Satellite galaxy abundance dependency on cosmology in Magneticum simulations
• The SDSS DR7 Galaxy Angular Power Spectrum: Volume-Limits and Galaxy Morphology
• Two spectroscopically confirmed galaxy structures at z=0.61 and 0.74 in the CFHTLS Deep~3 field