The clustering of ALFALFA galaxies: dependence on HI mass, relationship to optical samples & clues on host halo properties

Abstract

We use a sample of ~6000 galaxies detected by the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) 21cm survey, to measure the clustering properties of HI-selected galaxies. We find no convincing evidence for a dependence of clustering on the galactic atomic hydrogen (HI) mass, over the range M_HI ~ 10^{8.5} - 10^{10.5} M_sun. We show that previously reported results of weaker clustering for low-HI mass galaxies are probably due to finite-volume effects. In addition, we compare the clustering of ALFALFA galaxies with optically selected samples drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We find that HI-selected galaxies cluster more weakly than even relatively optically faint galaxies, when no color selection is applied. Conversely, when SDSS galaxies are split based on their color, we find that the correlation function of blue optical galaxies is practically indistinguishable from that of HI-selected galaxies. At the same time, SDSS galaxies with red colors are found to cluster significantly more than HI-selected galaxies, a fact that is evident in both the projected as well as the full two-dimensional correlation function. A cross-correlation analysis further reveals that gas-rich galaxies "avoid" being located within ~3 Mpc of optical galaxies with red colors. Next, we consider the clustering properties of halo samples selected from the Bolshoi LambdaCDM simulation. A comparison with the clustering of ALFALFA galaxies suggests that galactic HI mass is not tightly related to host halo mass, and that a sizable fraction of subhalos do not host HI galaxies. Lastly, we find that we can recover fairly well the correlation function of HI galaxies by just excluding halos with low spin parameter. This finding lends support to the hypothesis that halo spin plays a key role in determining the gas content of galaxies.

Accepted to ApJ. 27 figures, 1 table; 50 pages in aastex (equivalent to 19 pages of emulateapj)

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