Comparison between the Blue and Red Galaxy Alignments Detected in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract

We measure the intrinsic alignments of the blue and the red galaxies separately by analyzing the spectroscopic data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 6 (SDSS DR6). For both samples of the red and blue galaxies with axial ratios of b/a ≤ 0.8, we detect a 3 σ signal of the ellipticity correlation in the redshift range of 0 ≤ z ≤ 0.4 for an r-band absolute (model) magnitude cut of Mr ≤ -19.2 (no K-correction). We note a difference in the strength and the distance scale for the red and the blue galaxy correlation η2D(r): For the bright blue galaxies, it behaves as a quadratic scaling of the linear density correlation of ξ(r) as η2D(r) ∝ ξ2(r) with strong signal detected only at a small distance bin of r ≤ 3 h-1 Mpc, while for the bright red galaxies it follows a linear scaling as η2D(r) ∝ ξ(r) with signals detected at larger distance out to r ~ 6 h-1 Mpc. We also test whether the detected correlation signal is intrinsic or spurious by quantifying the systematic error and find that the effect of the systematic error on the ellipticity correlation is negligible. It is finally concluded that our results will be useful for the weak lensing measurements as well as the understanding of the large-scale structure formation.