A halo model with environment dependence: theoretical considerations

Abstract

We present a modification of the standard halo model with the goal of providing an improved description of galaxy clustering. Recent surveys, like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Anglo-Australian two-degree survey (2dF), have shown that there seems to be a correlation between the clustering of galaxies and their properties such as metallicity and star formation rate, which are believed to be environment-dependent. This environmental dependence is not included in the standard halo model where the host halo mass is the only variable specifying galaxy properties. In our approach, the halo properties, i.e. the concentration, and the halo occupation distribution (HOD) prescription, will not only depend on the halo mass (like in the standard halo model) but also on the halo environment. We examine how different environmental dependence of halo concentration and HOD prescription affects the correlation function. We see that at the level of dark matter, the concentration of haloes moderately affects the dark matter correlation function only at small scales. However, the galaxy correlation function is extremely sensitive to the HOD details, even when only the HOD of a small fraction of haloes is modified.