Motivated by observational results, we use IllustrisTNG hydrodynamical
numerical simulations to study the alignment of the central galaxies in groups
with the surrounding structures. This approach allows us to analyse galaxy and
group properties not available in observations. To perform this analysis, we
use a modified version of the two-point cross-correlation function and a
measure of the angle between the semi-major axes of the central galaxies and
the larger structures. Overall, our results reproduce observational ones, as we
find large-scale anisotropy, which is dominated by the red central galaxies. In
addition, the latter is noticeably more aligned with their group than the blue
ones. In contrast to the observations, we find a strong dependence of the
anisotropy on the central galaxy with mass, probably associated with the
inability of observational methods to determine them. This result allows us to
link the alignment to the process of halo assembly and the well-known
dependence of halo anisotropy on mass. When we include the dark matter
distribution in our analysis, we conclude that the galaxy alignment found in
simulations (and observations) can be explained by a combination of physical
processes at different scales: the central galaxy aligns with the dark matter
halo it inhabits, and this, in turn, aligns with the surrounding structures at
large scales.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures, Accepted by MNRA