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Register a new userA chronicle of galaxy mass assembly in the EAGLE simulation
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We analyse the mass assembly of central galaxies in the EAGLE hydrodynamical simulations. We build merger trees to connect galaxies to their progenitors at different redshifts and characterize their assembly histories by focusing on the time when half of the galaxy stellar mass was assembled into the main progenitor. We show that galaxies with stellar mass $M_*<10^{10.5}M_{odot}$ assemble most of their stellar mass through star formation in the main progenitor (`in-situ star formation). This can be understood as a consequence of the steep rise in star formation efficiency with halo mass for these galaxies. For more massive galaxies, however, an increasing fraction of their stellar mass is formed outside the main progenitor and subsequently accreted. Consequently, while for low-mass galaxies the assembly time is close to the stellar formation time, the stars in high-mass galaxies typically formed long before half of the present-day stellar mass was assembled into a single object, giving rise to the observed anti-hierarchical downsizing trend. In a typical present-day $M_*geq10^{11}M_{odot}$ galaxy, around $20%$ of the stellar mass has an external origin. This fraction decreases with increasing redshift. Bearing in mind that mergers only make an important contribution to the stellar mass growth of massive galaxies, we find that the dominant contribution comes from mergers with galaxies of mass greater than one tenth of the main progenitors mass. The galaxy merger fraction derived from our simulations agrees with recent observational estimates.
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Despite the insights gained in the last few years, our knowledge about the formation and evolution scenario for the spheroid-dominated galaxies is still incomplete. New and more powerful cosmological simulations have been developed that together with more precise observations open the possibility of more detailed study of the formation of early-type galaxies (ETGs). The aim of this work is to analyse the assembly histories of ETGs in a $Lambda$-CDM cosmology, focussing on the archeological approach given by the mass-growth histories.We inspected a sample of dispersion-dominated galaxies selected from the largest volume simulation of the EAGLE project. This simulation includes a variety of physical processes such as radiative cooling, star formation (SF), metal enrichment, and stellar and active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback. The selected sample comprised 508 spheroid-dominated galaxies classified according to their dynamical properties. Their surface brightness profile, the fundamental relations, kinematic properties, and stellar-mass growth histories are estimated and analysed. The findings are confronted with recent observations.The simulated ETGs are found to globally reproduce the fundamental relations of ellipticals. All of them have an inner disc component where residual younger stellar populations (SPs) are detected. A fraction of this inner-disc correlates with bulge-to-total ratio. We find a relation between kinematics and shape that implies that dispersion-dominated galaxies with low $V/sigma_L$ (where $V$ is the average rotational velocity and $sigma_L$ the one dimensional velocity dispersion) tend to have ellipticity smaller than $sim 0.5$ and are dominated by old stars. Abridged
We investigate the dependence of the galaxy properties on cosmic web environments using the most up-to-date hydrodynamic simulation: Evolution and Assembly of Galaxies and their Environments (EAGLE). The baryon fractions in haloes and the amplitudes of the galaxy luminosity function decrease going from knots to filaments to sheets to voids. Interestingly, the value of L$^*$ varies dramatically in different cosmic web environments. At z = 0, we find a characteristic halo mass of $10^{12} h^{-1}rm M_{odot}$, below which the stellar-to-halo mass ratio is higher in knots while above which it reverses. This particular halo mass corresponds to a characteristic stellar mass of $1.8times 10^{10} h^{-1}rm M_{odot}$. Below the characteristic stellar mass central galaxies have redder colors, lower sSFRs and higher metallicities in knots than those in filaments, sheets and voids, while above this characteristic stellar mass, the cosmic web environmental dependences either reverse or vanish. Such dependences can be attributed to the fact that the active galaxy fraction decreases along voids, sheets, filaments and knots. The cosmic web dependences get weaker towards higher redshifts for most of the explored galaxy properties and scaling relations, except for the gas metallicity vs. stellar mass relation.
Empirical models of galaxy formation require assumptions about the correlations between galaxy and halo properties. These may be calibrated against observations or inferred from physical models such as hydrodynamical simulations. In this Letter, we use the EAGLE simulation to investigate the correlation of galaxy size with halo properties. We motivate this analysis by noting that the common assumption of angular momentum partition between baryons and dark matter in rotationally supported galaxies overpredicts both the spread in the stellar mass-size relation and the anticorrelation of size and velocity residuals, indicating a problem with the galaxy-halo connection it implies. We find the EAGLE galaxy population to perform significantly better on both statistics, and trace this success to the weakness of the correlations of galaxy size with halo mass, concentration and spin at fixed stellar mass. Using these correlations in empirical models will enable fine-grained aspects of galaxy scalings to be matched.
We investigate the contentious issue of the presence, or lack thereof, of satellites mass segregation in galaxy groups using the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey, the GALFORM semi-analytic and the EAGLE cosmological hydrodynamical simulation catalogues of galaxy groups. We select groups with halo mass $12 leqslant log(M_{text{halo}}/h^{-1}M_odot) <14.5$ and redshift $z leqslant 0.32$ and probe the radial distribution of stellar mass out to twice the group virial radius. All the samples are carefully constructed to be complete in stellar mass at each redshift range and efforts are made to regularise the analysis for all the data. Our study shows negligible mass segregation in galaxy group environments with absolute gradients of $lesssim0.08$ dex and also shows a lack of any redshift evolution. Moreover, we find that our results at least for the GAMA data are robust to different halo mass and group centre estimates. Furthermore, the EAGLE data allows us to probe much fainter luminosities ($r$-band magnitude of 22) as well as investigate the three-dimensional spatial distribution with intrinsic halo properties, beyond what the current observational data can offer. In both cases we find that the fainter EAGLE data show a very mild spatial mass segregation at $z leqslant 0.22$, which is again not apparent at higher redshift. Interestingly, our results are in contrast to some earlier findings using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We investigate the source of the disagreement and suggest that subtle differences between the group finding algorithms could be the root cause.
We use the EAGLE hydrodynamical simulation to trace the quenching history of galaxies in its 10 most massive clusters. We use two criteria to identify moments when galaxies suffer significant changes in their star formation activity: {it i)} the instantaneous star formation rate (SFR) strongest drop, $Gamma_{rm SFR}^{rm SD}$, and {it ii)} a quenching criterion based on a minimum threshold for the specific SFR of $lesssim$ 10$^{-11}rm yr^{-1}$. We find that a large fraction of galaxies ($gtrsim 60%$) suffer their $Gamma_{rm SFR}^{rm SD}$ outside the clusters R$_{200}$. This ``pre-processed population is dominated by galaxies that are either low mass and centrals or inhabit low mass hosts ($10^{10.5}$M$_{odot} lesssim$ M$_{rm host} lesssim 10^{11.0}$M$_{odot}$). The host mass distribution is bimodal, and galaxies that suffered their $Gamma_{rm SFR}^{rm SD}$ in massive hosts ($10^{13.5}rm M_{odot} lesssim M_{host} lesssim 10^{14.0}M_{odot}$) are mainly processed within the clusters. Pre-processing mainly limits the total stellar mass with which galaxies arrive in the clusters. Regarding quenching, galaxies preferentially reach this state in high-mass halos ($10^{13.5}rm M_{odot} lesssim M_{host} lesssim 10^{14.5}M_{odot}$). The small fraction of galaxies that reach the cluster already quenched has also been pre-processed, linking both criteria as different stages in the quenching process of those galaxies. For the $z=0$ satellite populations, we find a sharp rise in the fraction of quenched satellites at the time of first infall, highlighting the role played by the dense cluster environment. Interestingly, the fraction of pre-quenched galaxies rises with final cluster mass. This is a direct consequence of the hierarchical cosmological model used in these simulations.
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