No Arabic abstract
We present a series of results from a clustering analysis of the first data release of the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) Deep Extragalactic Observations (VIDEO) survey. VIDEO is the only survey currently capable of probing the bulk of stellar mass in galaxies at redshifts corresponding to the peak of star formation on degree scales. Galaxy clustering is measured with the two-point correlation function, which is calculated using a non parametric kernel based density estimator. We use our measurements to investigate the connection between the galaxies and the host dark matter halo using a halo occupation distribution methodology, deriving bias, satellite fractions, and typical host halo masses for stellar masses between $10^{9.35}M_{odot}$ and $10^{10.85}M_{odot}$, at redshifts $0.5<z<1.7$. Our results show typical halo mass increasing with stellar mass (with moderate scatter) and bias increasing with stellar mass and redshift consistent with previous studies. We find the satellite fraction increased towards low redshifts, increasing from $sim 5%$ at $zsim 1.5$, to $sim 20%$ at $zsim 0.6$, also increasing for lower mass galaxies. We combine our results to derive the stellar mass to halo mass ratio for both satellites and centrals over a range of halo masses and find the peak corresponding to the halo mass with maximum star formation efficiency to be $ sim 2 times10^{12} M_{odot}$ over cosmic time, finding no evidence for evolution.
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.
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.
Most galaxies in clusters have supermassive black holes at their center, and a fraction of those supermassive black holes show strong activity. These active galactic nuclei(AGNs) are an important probe of environmental dependence of galaxy evolution, intra-cluster medium, and cluster-scale feedback. We investigated AGN fraction in one of the largest samples of X-ray selected clusters from the ROSAT and their immediate surrounding field regions below z < 0.5. We found lower average AGN fraction in clusters, (2.37+-0.39)% than for the fields (5.12+-0.16)%. The lower AGN fractions in clusters were measured, after dividing the clusters into five redshift intervals between 0.0 and 0.5, in each redshift interval, and we found an increase in the fraction for both cluster and field galaxies with redshift below z < 0.5, which clearly indicates an environment and redshift dependence. We further divided the clusters into low-mass and high-mass objects using a mass cut at log(M500/Msun) = 13.5, finding comparable AGN fractions for both classifications, while a significantly higher AGN fraction in field. We also measured increasing AGN fractions with clustercentric distance for all redshift bins, further confirming the environmental dependence of AGN activities. In addition, we did not find an obvious trend between AGN fraction and SDSS-R absolute magnitudes among different redshift bins. We conclude that the lower AGN fraction in clusters relative to fields indicate that factors, such as inefficient galaxy mergers and ram pressure stripping cause a deficit of cold gas available in high density regions to fuel the central super-massive black hole. Clusters and fields in present universe have lost more gas relative to their high redshift counterparts resulting in a lower AGN fraction observed today.
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.
We present new gas kinematic observations with the OSIRIS instrument at the GTC for galaxies in the Cl1604 cluster system at z=0.9. These observations together with a collection of other cluster samples at different epochs analyzed by our group are used to study the evolution of the Tully-Fisher, velocity-size and stellar mass-angular momentum relations in dense environments over cosmic time. We use 2D and 3D spectroscopy to analyze the kinematics of our cluster galaxies and extract their maximum rotation velocities (Vmax). Our methods are consistently applied to all our cluster samples which make them ideal for an evolutionary comparison. Up to redshift one, our cluster samples show evolutionary trends compatible with previous observational results in the field and in accordance with semianalytical models and hydrodynamical simulations concerning the Tully-Fisher and velocity-size relations. However, we find a factor 3 drop in disk sizes and an average B-band luminosity enhancement of 2 mag by z=1.5. We discuss the role that different cluster-specific interactions may play in producing this observational result. In addition, we find that our intermediate-to-high redshift cluster galaxies follow parallel sequences with respect to the local specific angular momentum-stellar mass relation, although displaying lower angular momentum values in comparison with field samples at similar redshifts. This can be understood by the stronger interacting nature of dense environments with respect to the field.