Keitaro Ishikawa | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Luminosity-Dependent Assembly Bias of Central Galaxies from Weak Lensing and Clustering

Assembly bias, which is the variation in halo clustering at fixed mass driven by formation history, has long been predicted by numerical simulations but remains difficult to confirm observationally. Previous studies have reported evidence for halo assembly bias by dividing samples according to galaxy stellar mass using various methods. In this work, we present observational measurements of halo assembly bias based on the luminosity of spectroscopically confirmed brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). Using cluster catalogs and shear measurements from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, we employ a mass-dependent halo-bias model to disentangle halo bias from its underlying mass dependence in galaxy-galaxy lensing and clustering measurements. We confirm that brighter BCGs are less strongly clustered on large scales, with a relative bias ratio deviating from unity at the $\sim3σ$ level, suggesting the presence of assembly bias. Similar qualitative trends are also found in the FLAMINGO and MillenniumTNG hydrodynamical simulations, strengthening the connection between galaxy luminosity and halo formation history.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

Robustness of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations Measurements with Photometric Redshift Uncertainties

We investigate the robustness of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) measurements with a photometric galaxy sample using mock galaxy catalogues with various sizes of photometric redshift (photo-$z$) uncertainties. We first conduct the robustness of BAO measurements, assuming we have a perfect knowledge of photo-$z$ uncertainties. We find that the BAO shift parameter $α$ can be constrained in an unbiased manner even for 3% photometric redshift uncertainties up to $z\sim 1$. For instance, $α=1.006 \pm 0.078$ with 95% confidence level is obtained from 3% photo-$z$ uncertainty data at $z=1.03$ using the sample of $M_* \ge 10^{10.25} M_{\odot}/h^2$. We also find that a sparse galaxy sample, e.g. $<2\times10^{-4}$ [$h$ Mpc$^{-1}]^3$ causes additional noise in the covariance matrix calculation and can bias the constraint on $α$. Following this, we look into the scenario where incorrect photometric redshift uncertainties are assumed in the fitting model. We find that underestimating the photo-$z$ uncertainty leads to a degradation in the constraining power on $α$. However, the constrained value of $α$ is not biased. We also quantify the constraining power on $Ω_{\rm m0}$ assuming the LSST-like covariance and find that the 95% confidence level is $σ(Ω_{\rm m0})\sim0.03$-$0.05$ corresponding to the photo-$z$ uncertainties of 1% to 3% respectively. Finally, we examine whether the skewness in the photometric redshift can bias the constraint on $α$ and confirm that the constraint on $α$ is unbiased, even assuming a Gaussian photo-$z$ uncertainty in our model.

astro-ph.CO↗