Euclid preparation. Calibrated intrinsic galaxy alignments in the Euclid Flagship simulation

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Authors: Céline Gouin, Hoffmann, K., Romain Paviot, Benjamin Joachimi, N Tessore, Pau Tallada-Crespí, Nora Elisa Chisari, E. J. Gonzalez, Arthur Loureiro, P. Fosalba, J. Blazek, C. Laigle
+88 more Yohan Dubois, Christophe Pichon, B. Altieri, Stefano Andreon, N. Auricchio, C. Baccigalupi, Marco Baldi, S. Bardelli, Francis Bernardeau, A. Biviano, E. Branchini, M. Brescia, S. Camera, G Cañas-Herrera, V. Capobianco, C. Carbone, V. F. Cardone, J. Carretero, Santiago Casas, Francisco Javier Castander, M. Castellano, G. Castignani, S. Cavuoti, K. C. Chambers, G. Congedo, C Colodro-Conde, G. Congedo, L. Conversi, Y. Copin, F. Courbin, Hélène M. Courtois, A. Da Silva, Hubert Degaudenzi, G. De Lucia, Herve A. Dole, F. Dubath, C. A. J. Duncan, Xavier Dupac, S. Dusini, S. Escoffier, Maria Farina, R Farinelli, S. Farrens, S Ferriol, Fabio Finelli, Nicolas Fourmanoit, M. Frailis, Enrico Franceschi, M. Fumana, Samuele Galeotta, K. George, Bryan R. Gillis, C. Giocoli, J. Graciá‐Carpio, A. Grazian, Frank U. Grupp, S. V. H. Haugan, Henk Hoekstra, W. Holmes, F. Hormuth, Allan Hornstrup, K. Jahnkę, M. Jhabvala, Elina Keihänen, Smaïn Kermiche, A. Kiessling, M. Kilbinger, Bogna Kubik, M Kümmel, Martin Kunz, Hannu Kurki-Suonio, Amandine M. C. Le Brun, S. Ligori, Per Barth Lilje, V. Lindholm, Ivan Lloro, Gabriele Mainetti, Davide Maino, E. Maiorano, O. Mansutti, S. Marcin, O. Marggraf, M. Martinelli, N. Martinet, F. Marulli, Richard James Massey, Eduardo Medinaceli, S. Mei
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Abstract

Intrinsic alignments of galaxies are potentially a major contaminant of cosmological analyses of weak gravitational lensing. We construct a semi-analytic model of galaxy ellipticities and alignments in the \Euclid Flagship simulation to predict this contamination in Euclid's weak lensing observations. Galaxy shapes and orientations are determined by the corresponding properties of the host haloes in the underlying $N$-body simulation, as well as the relative positions of galaxies within their halo. Alignment strengths are moderated via stochastic misalignments, separately for central and satellite galaxies and conditional on the galaxy's redshift, luminosity, and rest-frame colour. The resulting model is calibrated against galaxy ellipticity statistics from the COSMOS Survey, selected alignment measurements based on Sloan Digital Sky Survey samples, and galaxy orientations extracted from the Horizon-AGN hydrodynamic simulation at redshift $z=1$. The best-fit model has a total of 12 alignment parameters and generally reproduces the calibration data sets well within the $1σ$ statistical uncertainties of the observations and the \flagship simulation, with notable exceptions for the most luminous sub-samples on small physical scales. The statistical power of the calibration data and the volume of the single \flagship realisation are still too small to provide informative prior ranges for intrinsic alignment amplitudes in relevant galaxy samples. As a first application, we predict that \Euclid end-of-mission tomographic weak gravitational lensing two-point statistics are modified by up to order $10\,\%$ due to intrinsic alignments.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Galaxies: Formation Evolution Phenomena Cosmology and Gravitation Theories Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
12 January 2026
Document type
Preprint