Morphological Bias: How Ellipticals and Spirals Trace the Cosmic Web Differently

Abstract

We present a data-driven measurement of galaxy bias and scale-dependent relative bias for elliptical and spiral galaxies using angular auto- and cross-power spectra from DES and DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys DR8. We introduce the cross-tracer clustering ratio (CTCR), which uses the ratio of auto- to cross-power spectra to isolate the relative clustering of morphological tracers as a function of angular multipole $\ell$. Across both surveys, ellipticals are more strongly clustered than spirals; the cleanest CTCR constraints come from DESI, where the two morphological samples have better-matched redshift distributions. The difference is scale dependent: the relative bias is close to unity on large angular scales, $\ell \lesssim 50$, but increases toward smaller scales, reaching an average separation of $2.6\sigma$ at $\ell \sim 150-200$. A complementary linear-bias analysis confirms that ellipticals are positively biased relative to the matter field, while spirals are consistent with weak bias or anti-bias. Unlike narrowly selected LRG samples, our morphologically selected elliptical samples show little redshift evolution, consistent with a broader halo-mass distribution. The results are robust to two covariance estimators, contamination tests, luminosity splits, and comparisons with two N-body mock catalogs. These new findings provide empirical evidence that galaxy morphology imprints both the amplitude and scale dependence of galaxy bias, and establish CTCR as a useful observable for testing halo occupation and assembly-bias models with future imaging surveys.