Model BOSS and eBOSS luminous red galaxies at 0.2 < z < 1.0 using SubHalo Abundance Matching with three parameters

SubHalo Abundance Matching (SHAM) is an empirical method for constructing galaxy catalogues based on high-resolution N-body simulations. We apply SHAM on the UNIT simulation to simulate SDSS BOSS/eBOSS luminous red galaxies (LRGs) within a wide redshift range of 0.2 < z < 1.0. Besides the typical SHAM scatter parameter sigma, we include v(smear) and V-ceil to take into account the redshift uncertainty and the galaxy incompleteness, respectively. These two additional parameters are critical for reproducing the observed 2PCF multipoles on 5-25 h(-1). The redshift uncertainties obtained from the best-fitting v(smear) agree with those measured from repeat observations for all SDSS LRGs except for the LOWZ sample. We explore several potential systematics but none of them can explain the discrepancy found in LOWZ. Our explanation is that the LOWZ galaxies might contain another type of galaxies that needs to be treated differently. The evolution of the measured sigma and V-ceil also reveals that the incompleteness of eBOSS galaxies decreases with the redshift. This is the consequence of the magnitude lower limit applied in eBOSS LRG target selection. Our SHAM also set upper limits for the intrinsic scatter of the galaxy-halo relation, given a complete galaxy sample: sigma(int) < 0.31 for LOWZ at 0.2 < z < 0.33, sigma(int) < 0.36 for LOWZ at 0.33 < z < 0.43, and sigma(int) < 0.46 for CMASS at 0.43 < z < 0.51. The projected 2PCFs of our SHAM galaxies also agree with the observational ones on the 2PCF fitting range.

Automated summary

SubHalo Abundance Matching (SHAM) is an empirical method that uses high-resolution N-body simulations to construct galaxy catalogues. In this study, SHAM is applied to the UNIT simulation to simulate SDSS BOSS/eBOSS luminous red galaxies (LRGs) over a wide redshift range. Additional parameters, v(smear) and V-ceil, are included to account for redshift uncertainty and galaxy incompleteness, and they are crucial for reproducing observed 2PCF multipoles. The results suggest that the LOWZ sample may contain another type of galaxies that require different treatment.