An Optimal Estimator of Intrinsic Alignments for Star-forming Galaxies
  in IllustrisTNG Simulation
  Emission line galaxies (ELGs), more generally star-forming galaxies, are
valuable tracers of large-scale structure and therefore main targets of
upcoming wide-area spectroscopic galaxy surveys. We propose a fixed-aperture
shape estimator of each ELG for extracting the intrinsic alignment (IA) signal,
and assess the performance of the method using image simulations of ELGs
generated from the IllustrisTNG simulation including observational effects such
as the sky background noise. We show that our method enables a significant
detection of the IA power spectrum with the linear-scale coefficient $A_{\rm
IA}\simeq (13$--$15)\pm 3.0$ up to $z=2$, even from the small simulation volume
$\sim0.009\,(h^{-1}{\rm Gpc})^3$, in contrast to the null detection with the
standard method. Thus the ELG IA signal, measured with our method, opens up
opportunities to exploit cosmology and galaxy physics in high-redshift
universe.
