No Arabic abstract
We explore the connection between the stellar component of galaxies and their host halos during the epoch of reionization ($5 leq zleq10$) using the CROC (Cosmic Reionization on Computers) simulations. We compare simulated galaxies with observations and find that CROC underpredicts the abundance of luminous galaxies when compared to observed UV luminosity functions, and analogously the most massive galaxies when compared to observed stellar mass functions. We can trace the deficit of star formation to high redshifts, where the slope of the star formation rate to stellar mass relation is consistent with observations, but the normalization is systematically low. This results in a star formation rate density and stellar mass density that is systematically offset from observations. However, the less luminous or lower stellar mass objects have luminosities and stellar masses that agree fairly well with observational data. We explore the stellar-to-halo mass ratio, a key quantity that is difficult to measure at high redshifts and that models do not consistently predict. In CROC, the stellar-to-halo mass ratio {it decreases} with redshift, a trend opposite to some abundance matching studies. These discrepancies uncover where future effort should be focused in order to improve the fidelity of modeling cosmic reionization. We also compare the CROC galaxy bias with observational measurements using Lyman-Break Galaxy (LBG) samples. The good agreement of simulation and data shows that the clustering of dark matter halos is properly captured in CROC.
It is widely reported, based on clustering measurements of observed active galactic nuclei (AGN) samples, that AGN reside in similar mass host dark matter halos across the bulk of cosmic time, with log $M/M_odot$~12.5-13.0 to z~2.5. We show that this is due in part to the AGN fraction in galaxies rising with increasing stellar mass, combined with AGN observational selection effects that exacerbate this trend. Here, we use AGN specific accretion rate distribution functions determined as a function of stellar mass and redshift for star-forming and quiescent galaxies separately, combined with the latest galaxy-halo connection models, to determine the parent and sub-halo mass distribution function of AGN to various observational limits. We find that while the median (sub-)halo mass of AGN, $approx10^{12}M_odot$, is fairly constant with luminosity, specific accretion rate, and redshift, the full halo mass distribution function is broad, spanning several orders of magnitude. We show that widely used methods to infer a typical dark matter halo mass based on an observed AGN clustering amplitude can result in biased, systematically high host halo masses. While the AGN satellite fraction rises with increasing parent halo mass, we find that the central galaxy is often not an AGN. Our results elucidate the physical causes for the apparent uniformity of AGN host halos across cosmic time and underscore the importance of accounting for AGN selection biases when interpreting observational AGN clustering results. We further show that AGN clustering is most easily interpreted in terms of the relative bias to galaxy samples, not from absolute bias measurements alone.
SubHalo Abundance Matching (SHAM) assumes that one (sub)halo property, such as mass Mvir or peak circular velocity Vpeak, determines properties of the galaxy hosted in each (sub)halo such as its luminosity or stellar mass. This assumption implies that the dependence of Galaxy Luminosity Functions (GLFs) and the Galaxy Stellar Mass Function (GSMF) on environmental density is determined by the corresponding halo density dependence. In this paper, we test this by determining from an SDSS sample the observed dependence with environmental density of the ugriz GLFs and GSMF for all galaxies, and for central and satellite galaxies separately. We then show that the SHAM predictions are in remarkable agreement with these observations, even when the galaxy population is divided between central and satellite galaxies. However, we show that SHAM fails to reproduce the correct dependence between environmental density and g-r color for all galaxies and central galaxies, although it better reproduces the color dependence on environmental density of satellite galaxies.
By linking galaxies in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to subhaloes in the ELUCID simulation, we investigate the relation between subhalo formation time and the galaxy properties, and the dependence of galaxy properties on the cosmic web environment. We find that central and satellite subhaloes have different formation time, where satellite subhaloes are older than central subhaloes at fixed mass. At fixed mass, the galaxy stellar-to-subhalo mass ratio is a good proxy of the subhalo formation time, and increases with the subhalo formation redshifts, especially for massive galaxies. The subhalo formation time is dependent on the cosmic web environment. For central subhaloes, there is a characteristic subhalo mass of $sim 10^{12} msun$, below which subhaloes in knots are older than subhaloes of the same mass in filaments, sheets, or voids, while above which it reverses. The cosmic web environmental dependence of stellar-to-subhalo mass ratio is similar to that of the subhalo formation time. For centrals, there is a characteristic subhalo mass of $sim 10^{12} msun$, below which the stellar-to-subhalo mass ratio is higher in knots than in filaments, sheets and voids, above which it reverses. Galaxies in knots have redder colors below $10^{12} msun$, while above $10^{12} msun$, the environmental dependence vanishes. Satellite fraction is strongly dependent on the cosmic web environment, and decreases from knots to filaments to sheets to voids, especially for low-mass galaxies.
Both simulation and observational data have shown that the spin and shape of dark matter halos are correlated with their nearby large-scale environment. As structure formation on different scales is strongly coupled, it is trick to disentangle the formation of halo with the large-scale environment, making it difficult to infer which is the driving force for the correlation between halo spin/shape with the large-scale structure. In this paper, we use N-body simulation to produce twin Universes that share the same initial conditions on small scales but different on large scales. This is achieved by changing the random seeds for the phase of those k modes smaller than a given scale in the initial conditions. In this way, we are able to disentangle the formation of halo and large-scale structure, making it possible to investigate how halo spin and shape correspond to the change of environment on large scales. We identify matching halo pairs in the twin simulations as those sharing the maximum number of identical particles within each other. Using these matched halo pairs, we study the cross match of halo spin and their correlation with the large-scale structure. It is found that when the large-scale environment changes (eigenvector) between the twin simulations, the halo spin has to rotate accordingly, although not significantly, to maintain the universal correlation seen in each simulation. Our results suggest that the large-scale structure is the main factor to drive the correlation between halo properties and their environment.
We examine the reionization history of present-day galaxies by explicitly tracing the building blocks of halos from the Cosmic Reionization On Computers project. We track dark matter particles that belong to $z=0$ halos to trace the neutral fractions at corresponding positions during rapid global reionization. The resulting particle reionization histories allow us to explore different definitions of a halos reionization redshift and to account for the neutral content of the interstellar medium. Consistent with previous work, we find a systematic trend of reionization redshift with mass - present day halos with higher masses have earlier reionization times. Finally, we quantify the spread of reionization times within each halo, which also has a mass dependence.