Correlating galaxy colour and halo concentration: a tunable halo model of galactic conformity

Abstract

We extend the halo occupation distribution (HOD) framework to generate mock galaxy catalogues exhibiting varying levels of ‘galactic conformity’, which has emerged as a potentially powerful probe of environmental effects in galaxy evolution. Our model correlates galaxy colours in a group with the concentration of the common parent dark halo through a ‘group quenching efficiency’ ρ which makes older, more concentrated haloes at fixed mass preferentially host redder galaxies. We find that, for a specific value of ρ, this 1-halo conformity matches corresponding measurements in a group catalogue based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our mocks also display conformity at large separations from isolated objects, potentially an imprint of halo assembly bias. A detailed study – using mocks with assembly bias erased while keeping 1-halo conformity intact – reveals a rather nuanced situation, however. At separations ≲4 Mpc, conformity is mainly a 1-halo effect dominated by the largest haloes and is not a robust indicator of assembly bias. Only at very large separations (≳8 Mpc) does genuine 2-halo conformity, driven by the assembly bias of small haloes, manifest distinctly. We explain all these trends in standard halo model terms. Our model opens the door to parametrized HOD analyses that self-consistently account for galactic conformity at all scales.