UCL Discovery Stage
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery Stage

Third-order intrinsic alignment of SDSS BOSS LOWZ galaxies

Linke, Laila; Pyne, Susan; Joachimi, Benjamin; Georgiou, Christos; Hoffmann, Kai; Mandelbaum, Rachel; Singh, Sukhdeep; (2024) Third-order intrinsic alignment of SDSS BOSS LOWZ galaxies. Astronomy & Astrophysics , 691 , Article A312. 10.1051/0004-6361/202451032. Green open access

[thumbnail of Joachimi_Third-order intrinsic alignment of SDSS BOSS LOWZ galaxies_VoR.pdf]
Preview
Text
Joachimi_Third-order intrinsic alignment of SDSS BOSS LOWZ galaxies_VoR.pdf

Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

Cosmic shear is a powerful probe of cosmology, but it is affected by the intrinsic alignment (IA) of galaxy shapes with the large-scale structure. Upcoming surveys such as Euclid and Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) require an accurate understanding of IA, particularly for higher-order cosmic shear statistics that are vital for extracting the most cosmological information. In this paper, we report the first detection of third-order IA correlations using the LOWZ galaxy sample from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). We compare our measurements with predictions from the MICE cosmological simulation and an analytical model inspired by the Non-linear Linear Alignment (NLA) model and informed by second-order correlations. We also explore the dependence of the third-order correlation on the galaxies luminosity. We find that the amplitude AIA of the IA signal is non-zero at the 4.7 (7.6) level for scales between 6 h1 Mpc (1 h1 Mpc) and 20 h1 Mpc. For scales above 6 h1 Mpc the inferred AIA agrees both with the prediction from the simulation and estimates from second-order statistics within 1 but deviations arise at smaller scales. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of measuring third-order IA correlations and using them for constraining IA models. The agreement between second- and third-order IA constraints also opens the opportunity for a consistent joint analysis and IA self-calibration, promising tighter parameter constraints for upcoming cosmological surveys.

Type: Article
Title: Third-order intrinsic alignment of SDSS BOSS LOWZ galaxies
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202451032
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202451032
Language: English
Additional information: © The Authors 2024. Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0).
Keywords: gravitational lensing: weak, cosmology: observations, large-scale structure of Universe
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10204341
Downloads since deposit
72Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item