English

Symmetry in Hyper Suprime-Cam galaxy spin directions

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2024-11-14 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

We perform a Bayesian analysis of anisotropy in binary galaxy spin directions in the Hyper-Suprime Cam Data Release 3 catalogue, in response to a recent claim that it exhibits a dipole (Shamir 2024). We find no significant evidence for anisotropy, or for a direction-independent spin probability that differs from 0.5. These results are unchanged allowing for a quadrupole or simply searching for a fixed anisotropy between any two hemispheres, and the Bayes factor indicates decisive evidence for the isotropic model. Our principled method contrasts with the statistic employed by Shamir 2024, which lacks a strong theoretical foundation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.18884,
  title  = {Symmetry in Hyper Suprime-Cam galaxy spin directions},
  author = {Richard Stiskalek and Harry Desmond},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.18884},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

3 pages, 1 figure. Accepted in RNAAS