Imprint of anisotropic primordial non-Gaussianity on halo intrinsic alignments in simulations

Abstract

Using $N$-body simulations of cosmological large-scale structure formation, for the first time, we show that the anisotropic primordial non-Gaussianity (PNG) causes a scale-dependent modification, given by $1/k^2$ at small $k$ limit, in the three-dimensional power spectra of halo shapes (intrinsic alignments), whilst the conventional power spectrum of halo number density field remains unaffected. We discuss that wide-area imaging and spectrocopic surveys observing the same region of the sky allow us to constrain the quadrupole PNG coefficient $f_{\rm NL}^{s=2}$ at a precision comparable with or better than that of the cosmic microwave background.