English

Unifying cluster and galaxy cosmology analyses using the galaxy-halo connection

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-01-26 v1

Abstract

Galaxies and galaxy clusters trace the same cosmic density field, but their statistics have been modeled separately in cosmological analyses. We present a unified, simulation-based framework to model them using the galaxy-halo connection. Our analysis includes cluster lensing, galaxy clustering, and galaxy-cluster cross-correlation. We validate our method on the FLAMINGO hydrodynamic simulation. Relative to the cluster-only approach, combining these probes improves the σ8Ωm\sigma_8-\Omega_m figure of merit by a factor of 15. Our framework enables stringent tests of cosmological models and exploits small-scale information.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.16353,
  title  = {Unifying cluster and galaxy cosmology analyses using the galaxy-halo connection},
  author = {Shulei Cao and Hao-Yi Wu and Andrés N. Salcedo and David H. Weinberg and Matthieu Schaller and Joop Schaye},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.16353},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to PRL