An Empirical Model For Intrinsic Alignments: Insights From Cosmological Simulations

Understand

We extend current models of the halo occupation distribution (HOD) to include a flexible, empirical framework for the forward modeling of the intrinsic alignment (IA) of galaxies.

• A primary goal of this work is to produce mock galaxy catalogs for the purpose of validating existing models and methods for the mitigation of IA in weak lensing measurements.
• This technique can also be used to produce new, simulation-based predictions for IA and galaxy clustering.
• Our model is probabilistically formulated, and rests upon the assumption that the orientations of galaxies exhibit a correlation with their host dark matter (sub)halo orientation or with their position within the halo.