Pairwise velocities in the halo model: luminosity and scale dependence

We investigate the properties of the pairwise velocity dispersion as a function of galaxy luminosity in the context of a halo model. We derive the distribution of velocities of pairs at a given separation taking into account both one- and two-halo contributions. We show that pairwise velocity distribution in real space is a complicated mixture of host-satellite, satellite-satellite (sat-sat) and two-halo pairs. The peak value is reached at around 1 h -1 Mpc and does not reflect the velocity dispersion of a typical halo hosting these galaxies, but is instead dominated by the sat-sat pairs in high-mass clusters. This is true even for cross-correlations between bins separated in luminosity. As a consequence, the velocity dispersion at a given separation can decrease with luminosity, even if the underlying typical halo host mass is increasing, in agreement with recent observations. We compare our findings to numerical simulations and find a good agreement. Numerical simulations also suggest a luminosity-dependent velocity bias, which depends on the subhalo mass. We develop models of the auto- and cross-correlation functions of luminosity subsamples of galaxies in the observable r proj -π space and calculate the inferred velocity dispersion as a function of wavevector if dispersion model is fit to the redshift-space power spectrum. We find that so-derived pairwise velocity dispersion also exhibits a bump at k ∼ 1 h Mpc -1 .