Strong bimodality in the host halo mass of central galaxies from galaxy–galaxy lensing

2015/09/30 by Rachel Mandelbaum, Wenting Wang, Ying Zu +4 · 186 citations
Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Bimodality #Dark matter #Galactic halo #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Halo #Impact of Light on Environment and Health #Physics #Redshift #Remote Sensing in Agriculture #Satellite galaxy #Star formation #Stellar mass #Weak gravitational lensing #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA

paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stw188

published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 457(3), 3200-3218 (Oxford University Press) · 20 pages, 14 figures, submitted to MNRAS; v2 has minor changes in presentation in response to referee suggestions, but no changes in results

arxiv created 2016/01/14 · openalex publication_date 2016/02/20 · arxiv updated 2016/03/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We use galaxy–galaxy lensing to study the dark matter haloes surrounding a sample of locally brightest galaxies (LBGs) selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We measure mean halo mass as a function of the stellar mass and colour of the central galaxy. Mock catalogues constructed from semi-analytic galaxy formation simulations demonstrate that most LBGs are the central objects of their haloes, greatly reducing interpretation uncertainties due to satellite contributions to the lensing signal. Over the full stellar mass range, 10.3 < log [M*/M⊙] < 11.6, we find that passive central galaxies have haloes that are at least twice as massive as those of star-forming objects of the same stellar mass. The significance of this effect exceeds 3σ for log [M*/M⊙] > 10.7. Tests using the mock catalogues and on the data themselves clarify the effects of LBG selection and show that it cannot artificially induce a systematic dependence of halo mass on LBG colour. The bimodality in halo mass at fixed stellar mass is reproduced by the astrophysical model underlying our mock catalogue, but the sign of the effect is inconsistent with recent, nearly parameter-free age-matching models. The sign and magnitude of the effect can, however, be reproduced by halo occupation distribution models with a simple (few-parameter) prescription for type dependence.

Citations

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• Modeling Nearly Spherical Pure-bulge Galaxies with a Stellar Mass-to-light Ratio Gradient under the ΛCDM and MOND Paradigms. I. Methodology, Dynamical Stellar Mass, and Fundamental Mass Plane
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• GalaxyNet: connecting galaxies and dark matter haloes with deep neural networks and reinforcement learning in large volumes
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