Robust Measurement of Mass Dependence and Evolution of Galaxy-Halo Alignment
First author: Kun Xu
We measure the galaxy-ellipticity (GI) correlations for the Slogan Digital Sky Survey DR12 LOWZ and CMASS samples with the shape measurements from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys. We model the GI correlations in an N-body simulation with our recent accurate stellar-halo mass relation from the Photometric object Around Cosmic webs (PAC) method. The large data set and our accurate modeling turns out an accurate measurement of the alignment angle between central galaxies and their host halos. We find that the alignment of central elliptical galaxies with their host halos increases monotonically with galaxy stellar mass or host halo mass, which can be well described by a power law for the massive galaxies. We also find that central elliptical galaxies are more aligned with their host halos when they evolve to a lower redshift. In contrast, central disk galaxies are aligned with their host halos about 10 times more weakly in the GI correlation. These results have important implications for intrinsic alignment (IA) correction in weak lensing studies, IA cosmology, and theory of massive galaxy formation.