Intrinsic Ellipticity Correlation of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies and Misalignment with their Host Dark Matter Halos

Details Intrinsic Ellipticity Correlation of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies and Misalignment with their Host Dark Matter Halos Intrinsic Ellipticity Correlation of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies and Misalignment with their Host Dark Matter Halos

2008-09-22

arxiv.org/abs/0809.3790v3

Astrophys.J.694:214-221,2009

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

8 pages, 7 figures, minor changes made and references added with respect to published version

Scientific paper

10.1088/0004-637X/694/1/214

We investigate the orientation correlation of giant elliptical galaxies by measuring the intrinsic ellipticity correlation function of 83,773 luminous red galaxies (LRGs) at redshifts 0.16 -- 0.47 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We have accurately determined the correlation up to 30 $h^{-1}$Mpc. Luminosity dependence of the ellipticity correlation is also detected although the error bars are large, while no evidence is found for its redshift evolution between $z=0.2$ and $z=0.4$. Then we use a cosmological $N$-body simulation to examine misalignment between the central LRGs and their parent dark matter halos. Central and satellite galaxies are assigned to simulated halos by employing a halo occupation distribution model for the LRGs. The ellipticity correlation is predicted to have the same shape as but an amplitude about 4 times higher than our observation if the central LRGs are perfectly aligned with their host halos. This indicates that the central LRG galaxies are preferentially but not perfectly aligned with their host halos. With the assumption that there is a misalignment angle between a central LRG and its host halo which follows a Gaussian distribution with a zero mean and a width $\sigma_\theta$, we obtain a tight constraint on the misalignment parameter, $\sigma_\theta={35.4}^{+4.0}_{-3.3}$ deg. This type of intrinsic ellipticity correlation, if not corrected, can lead to contamination at 5% level to the shear power spectrum in weak lensing surveys of limiting magnitude $R_{AB}=24.5$ if the source central galaxies follow the same misalignment distribution as the LRGs.

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