KiDS-1000: Weak lensing and intrinsic alignment around luminous red galaxies

Abstract

We study the properties of luminous red galaxies (LRGs) selected from the fourth data release of the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS-1000) via galaxy-galaxy lensing of the background galaxies from KiDS-1000. We used a halo model formalism to interpret our measurements and obtain estimates of the halo masses as well as the satellite fractions of the LRGs, resulting in halo masses of 2.7×1012 h-1 M⊙ < Mh < 2.6×1013 h-1 M⊙. We studied the strength of intrinsic alignments (IA) using the position-shape correlations as a function of LRG luminosity, where we used a double power law to describe the relation between luminosity and halo mass to allow for a comparison with previous works. Here, we directly linked the observed IA of the (central) galaxy to the mass of the hosting halo, which is expected to be a fundamental quantity in establishing the alignment. We find that the dependence of the IA amplitude on halo mass is described well by a single power law, with an amplitude of A=5.74 ± 0.32 and slope of βM=-0.44 ± 0.04, in the range of 1.9×1012 h-1 M⊙ < Mh < 3.7×1014 h-1 M⊙. We also find that both red and blue galaxies from the source sample associated with the LRGs are randomly oriented, with respect to the LRGs, although our detection significance is limited by the uncertainty in our photometric redshifts.