Elucidating Galaxy Assembly Bias in SDSS

Abstract

We investigate the level of galaxy assembly bias in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) main galaxy sample using ELUCID, a state-of-the-art constrained simulation that accurately reconstructed the initial density perturbations within the SDSS volume. On top of the ELUCID haloes, we develop an extended HOD model that includes the assembly bias of central and satellite galaxies, parameterized as ${\mathcal{Q}}_{\mathrm{cen}}$ and ${\mathcal{Q}}_{\mathrm{sat}}$, respectively, to predict a suite of one- and two-point observables. In particular, our fiducial constraint employs the probability distribution of the galaxy number counts measured on $8\mathrm{Mpc}{h}^{-1}$ scales $N_8^g$ and the projected cross-correlation functions of quintiles of galaxies selected by $N_8^g$ with our entire galaxy sample. We perform extensive tests of the efficacy of our method by fitting the same observables to mock data using both constrained and non-constrained simulations. We discover that in many cases the level of cosmic variance between the two simulations can produce biased constraints that lead to an erroneous detection of galaxy assembly bias if the non-constrained simulation is used. When applying our method to the SDSS data, the ELUCID reconstruction effectively removes an otherwise strong degeneracy between cosmic variance and galaxy assembly bias in SDSS, enabling us to derive an accurate and stringent constraint on the latter. Our fiducial ELUCID constraint, for galaxies above a stellar mass threshold $M_{\ast }=10^{10.2}{h}^{-2}{M}_{\odot }$, is ${\mathcal{Q}}_{\mathrm{cen}}=-0.09\pm 0.05$ and ${\mathcal{Q}}_{\mathrm{sat}}=0.09\pm 0.10$, indicating no evidence for a significant~($>2\sigma$) galaxy assembly bias in the local Universe probed by SDSS. Finally, our method provides a promising path to the robust modelling of the galaxy-halo connection within future surveys like DESI and PFS.

25 pages, 7 main figures, and 2 appendix figures; accepted by SCPMA (https://www.sciengine.com/SCPMA/doi/10.1007/s11433-022-1955-7); highlight review (https://www.sciengine.com/SCPMA/doi/10.1007/s11433-022-1967-6)

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• The Aemulus Project V: Cosmological constraint from small-scale clustering of BOSS galaxies
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• The MillenniumTNG Project: Inferring cosmology from galaxy clustering with accelerated N-body scaling and subhalo abundance matching
• The cosmological dependence of halo and galaxy assembly bias
• Responses of Halo Occupation Distributions: a new ingredient in the halo model & the impact on galaxy bias
• Connections between galaxy properties and halo formation time in the cosmic web
• Modeling assembly bias with machine learning and symbolic regression
• Toward Accurate Modeling of Galaxy Clustering on Small Scales: Constraining the Galaxy-Halo Connection with Optimal Statistics
• Toward Accurate Modeling of Galaxy Clustering on Small Scales: Halo Model Extensions and Lingering Tension
• On the Constraints of Galaxy Assembly Bias in Velocity Space
• Satellite Content and Halo Mass of Galaxy Clusters: Comparison between Red-Sequence and Halo-based Optical Cluster Finders
• Assembly bias in quadratic bias parameters of dark matter halos from forward modeling
• Exploiting Non-linear Scales in Galaxy-Galaxy Lensing and Galaxy Clustering: A Forecast for the Dark Energy Survey