Bounds on galaxy stochasticity from halo occupation distribution modeling

¹ University Observatory, Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Scheinerstraße 1, 81679 Munich, Germany
² Department of Physics, Stanford University, 382 Via Pueblo Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
³ Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics & Cosmology, 452 Lomita Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
⁴ SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA
⁵ Excellence Cluster ORIGINS, Boltzmannstraße 2, 85748 Garching, Germany

Received: 5 April 2024
Accepted: 4 June 2024

Abstract

The joint probability distribution of matter overdensity and galaxy counts in cells is a powerful probe of cosmology, and the extent to which variance in galaxy counts at fixed matter density deviates from Poisson shot noise is not fully understood. The lack of informed bounds on this stochasticity is currently the limiting factor in constraining cosmology with the galaxy–matter probability distribution function (PDF). We investigate stochasticity in the conditional distribution of galaxy counts along lines of sight with fixed matter density, and we present a halo occupation distribution (HOD)-based approach for obtaining plausible ranges for stochasticity parameters. To probe the high-dimensional space of possible galaxy–matter connections, we derive a set of HODs that conserve the galaxies’ linear bias and number density to produce REDMAGIC-like galaxy catalogs within the ABACUSSUMMIT suite of N-body simulations. We study the impact of individual HOD parameters and cosmology on stochasticity and perform a Monte Carlo search in HOD parameter space subject to the constraints on bias and density. In mock catalogs generated by the selected HODs, shot noise in galaxy counts spans both sub-Poisson and super-Poisson values, ranging from 80% to 133% of Poisson variance for cells with mean matter density. Nearly all of the derived HODs show a positive relationship between local matter density and stochasticity. For galaxy catalogs with higher stochasticity, modeling galaxy bias to second order is required for an accurate description of the conditional PDF of galaxy counts at fixed matter density. The presence of galaxy assembly bias also substantially extends the range of stochasticity in the super-Poisson direction. This HOD-based approach leverages degrees of freedom in the galaxy–halo connection to obtain informed bounds on nuisance model parameters and can be adapted to study other parametrizations of shot noise in galaxy counts, in particular to motivate prior ranges on stochasticity for cosmological analyses.