No Arabic abstract
At a fixed halo mass, galaxy clusters with higher magnitude gaps have larger brightest central galaxy (BCG) stellar masses. Recent studies have shown that by including the magnitude gap ($rm m_{gap}$) as a latent parameter in the stellar mass - halo mass (SMHM) relation, we can make more precise measurements on the amplitude, slope, and intrinsic scatter. Using galaxy clusters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we measure the SMHM-$rm m_{gap}$ relation and its evolution out to $z=0.3$. Using a fixed comoving aperture of 100kpc to define the central galaxys stellar mass, we report statistically significant negative evolution in the slope of the SMHM relation to $z = 0.3$ ($> 3.5sigma$). The steepening of the slope over the last 3.5 Gyrs can be explained by late-time merger activity at the cores of galaxy clusters. We also find that the inferred slope depends on the aperture used to define the radial extent of the central galaxy. At small radii (20kpc), the slope of the SMHM relation is shallow, indicating that the core of the central galaxy is less related to the growth of the underlying host halo. By including all of the central galaxys light within 100kpc, the slope reaches an asymptote at a value consistent with recent high resolution hydrodynamical cosmology simulations.
A large variance exists in the amplitude of the Stellar Mass - Halo Mass (SMHM) relation for group and cluster-size halos. Using a sample of 254 clusters, we show that the magnitude gap between the brightest central galaxy (BCG) and its second or fourth brightest neighbor accounts for a significant portion of this variance. We find that at fixed halo mass, galaxy clusters with a higher magnitude gap have a higher BCG stellar mass. This relationship is also observed in semi-analytic representations of low-redshift galaxy clusters in simulations. This SMHM-magnitude gap stratification likely results from BCG growth via hierarchical mergers and may link assembly of the halo with the growth of the BCG. Using a Bayesian model, we quantify the importance of the magnitude gap in the SMHM relation using a multiplicative stretch factor, which we find to be significantly non-zero. The inclusion of the magnitude gap in the SMHM relation results in a large reduction in the inferred intrinsic scatter in the BCG stellar mass at fixed halo mass. We discuss the ramifications of this result in the context of galaxy formation models of centrals in group and cluster-sized halos.
We quantify evolution in the cluster scale stellar mass - halo mass (SMHM) relations parameters using 2323 clusters and brightest central galaxies (BCGs) over the redshift range $0.03 le z le 0.60$. The precision on inferred SMHM parameters is improved by including the magnitude gap ($rm m_{gap}$) between the BCG and fourth brightest cluster member (M14) as a third parameter in the SMHM relation. At fixed halo mass, accounting for $rm m_{gap}$, through a stretch parameter, reduces the SMHM relations intrinsic scatter. To explore this redshift range, we use clusters, BCGs, and cluster members identified using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey C4 and redMaPPer cluster catalogs and the Dark Energy Survey redMaPPer catalog. Through this joint analysis, we detect no systematic differences in BCG stellar mass, $rm m_{gap}$, and cluster mass (inferred from richness) between the datsets. We utilize the Pareto function to quantify each parameters evolution. We confirm prior findings of negative evolution in the SMHM relations slope (3.5$sigma$) and detect negative evolution in the stretch parameter (4.0$sigma$) and positive evolution in the offset parameter (5.8$sigma$). This observed evolution, combined with the absence of BCG growth, when stellar mass is measured within 50kpc, suggests that this evolution results from changes in the clusters $rm m_{gap}$. For this to occur, late-term growth must be in the intra-cluster light surrounding the BCG. We also compare the observed results to Illustris TNG 300-1 cosmological hydrodynamic simulations and find modest qualitative agreement. However, the simulations lack the evolutionary features detected in the real data.
We present an analysis of the predictions made by the Galform semi-analytic galaxy formation model for the evolution of the relationship between stellar mass and halo mass. We show that for the standard implementations of supernova feedback and gas reincorporation used in semi-analytic models, this relationship is predicted to evolve weakly over the redshift range 0<z<4. Modest evolution in the median stellar mass versus halo mass (SHM) relationship implicitly requires that, at fixed halo mass, the efficiency of stellar mass assembly must be almost constant with cosmic time. We show that in our model, this behaviour can be understood in simple terms as a result of a constant efficiency of gas reincorporation, and an efficiency of SNe feedback that is, on average, constant at fixed halo mass. We present a simple explanation of how feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) acts in our model to introduce a break in the SHM relation whose location is predicted to evolve only modestly. Finally, we show that if modifications are introduced into the model such that, for example, the gas reincorporation efficiency is no longer constant, the median SHM relation is predicted to evolve significantly over 0<z<4. Specifically, we consider modifications that allow the model to better reproduce either the evolution of the stellar mass function or the evolution of average star formation rates inferred from observations.
We study the effects of galaxy environment on the evolution of the stellar-mass function (SMF) over 0.2 < z < 2.0 using the FourStar Galaxy Evolution (ZFOURGE) survey and NEWFIRM Medium-Band Survey (NMBS) down to the stellar-mass completeness limit, log M / Msun > 9.0 (9.5) at z = 1.0 (2.0). We compare the SMFs for quiescent and star-forming galaxies in the highest and lowest environments using a density estimator based on the distance to the galaxies third-nearest neighbors. For star-forming galaxies, at all redshifts there are only minor differences with environment in the shape of the SMF. For quiescent galaxies, the SMF in the lowest densities shows no evolution with redshift, other than an overall increase in number density (phi*) with time. This suggests that the stellar-mass dependence of quenching in relatively isolated galaxies is both universal and does not evolve strongly. While at z >~ 1.5 the SMF of quiescent galaxies is indistinguishable in the highest and lowest densities, at lower redshifts it shows a rapidly increasing number density of lower-mass galaxies, log M / Msun ~= 9-10. We argue this evolution can account for all the redshift evolution in the shape of the total quiescent-galaxy SMF. This evolution in the quiescent-galaxy SMF at higher redshift (z > 1) requires an environmental-quenching efficiency that decreases with decreasing stellar mass at 0.5 < z < 1.5 or it would overproduce the number of lower-mass quiescent galaxies in denser environments. This requires a dominant environment process such as starvation combined with rapid gas depletion and ejection at z > 0.5 - 1.0 for galaxies in our mass range. The efficiency of this process decreases with redshift allowing other processes (such as galaxy interactions and ram-pressure stripping) to become more important at later times, z < 0.5.
We study how the void environment affects the formation and evolution of galaxies in the universe by comparing the ratio of dark matter halo mass to stellar mass of galaxies in voids with galaxies in denser regions. Using spectroscopic observations from the SDSS MaNGA DR15, we estimate the dark matter halo mass of 642 void galaxies and 938 galaxies in denser regions. We use the relative velocities of the H-alpha emission line across the galaxys surface to measure the rotation curve of each galaxy because the kinematics of the interstellar medium is smoother than the stellar kinematics. We find that neither the stellar-to-halo-mass relation nor the relationship between the gas-phase metallicity and the ratio of dark matter halo mass to stellar mass is affected by the void environment. We also observe no difference in the distribution of the ratio of dark matter halo mass to stellar mass between void galaxies and galaxies in denser regions, implying that the shape of the dark matter halo profile is independent of a galaxys environment.