The hierarchical formation of the brightest cluster galaxies

By G. Lucia, Jérémy Blaizot. 2006

1,283 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use semi-analytic techniques to study the formation and evolution of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). We show the extreme hierarchical nature of these objects and discuss the limitations of simple ways to capture their evolution. In a model where cooling flows are suppressed at late times by active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity, the stars of BCGs are formed very early (50 per cent at z ∼ 5, 80 per cent at z ∼ 3) and in many small galaxies. The high star formation rates in these high-z progenitors are fuelled by rapid cooling, not by merger-triggered starbursts. We find that model BCGs assemble surprisingly late: half their final mass is typically locked up in a single galaxy after z ∼ 0.5. Because most of the galaxies accreted on to BCGs have little gas content and red colours, late mergers do not change the apparent age of BCGs. It is this accumulation of a large number of old stellar populations - driven mainly by the merging history of the dark matter halo itself - that yields the observed homogeneity of BCG properties. In the second part of the paper, we discuss the evolution of BCGs to high redshifts, from both observational and theoretical viewpoints. We show that our model BCGs are in qualitative agreement with high-z observations. We discuss the hierarchical link between high-z BCGs and their local counterparts. We show that high-z BCGs belong to the same population as the massive end of local BCG progenitors, although they are not in general the same galaxies. Similarly, high-z BCGs end up as massive galaxies in the local Universe, although only a fraction of them are actually BCGs of massive clusters.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0ac5a84487b3d033b57b57fb0f2f77d6ad11321b

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. Volker Springel
4. R. Dav'e
5. Simon D. M. White
6. R. Somerville
7. C. Conroy
8. T. Naab

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. Volker Springel
4. Simon D. M. White
5. R. Dav'e
6. C. Conroy
7. R. Somerville
8. A. Dekel

Citations in the corpus

• PHAT: PHoto-z Accuracy Testing (2010, methodology): “– Prior: EAZY adopts a prior equal to the normalised redshift distribution of galaxies in the De Lucia & Blaizot (2007) semi-analytic light-cone at a given apparent R or K magnitude.”
• Star formation and AGN activity in SDSS cluster galaxies (2009, background): “It is therefore plausible (and indeed expected, see De Lucia & Blaizot 2007) that the mean age of the red galaxies increases towards the cluster center, and provides less fuel for the central black hole.”
• The Hierarchical Build-Up of Massive Galaxies and the Intracluster Light since z = 1 (2007, methodology): “Meanwhile, De Lucia & Blaizot (2007) and De Lucia et al. (2006) use a semianalytic model very similar to that used in KW07 and found that massive galaxies roughly double in stellar mass since z ¼ 1.”
• The Initial Conditions of the Universe from Constrained Simulations (2012, methodology): “As an input for our studies we have taken a galaxy catalogue which uses a semi-analytic halo-model scheme (De Lucia & Blaizot 2007) based on the Millennium Run simulation (Springel et al. 2005) with a box of 500 h−1 Mpc side.”
• The environmental history of group and cluster galaxies in a Λ cold dark matter universe (2011, methodology): “These merger trees represent the basic input needed for the semi-analytic model described in De Lucia & Blaizot (2007).”
• The VIMOS VLT deep survey: the assembly history of the stellar mass in galaxies: from the young to the old universe (2007, neutral): “…a missing ingredient in the hierarchical models of galaxy formation (for the inclusion of AGN feedback, see Bower et al. 2006; Kang et al. 2006; De Lucia & Blaizot 2007; Menci et al. 2006; Monaco et al. 2006; and see Neistein et al. 2006, for the description of a natural downsizing in star…”
• Size evolution of normal and compact galaxies in the EAGLE simulation (2015, background): “The main progenitor branch is that with the largest branch mass, as defined by De Lucia & Blaizot (2007).”
• WIDE-FIELD PRECISION KINEMATICS OF THE M87 GLOBULAR CLUSTER SYSTEM (2011, background): “…of BCG formation predict dualistic histories where most of the stellar mass is formed very early in the highest-σ peaks of the dark matter distribution, while much of the assembly of mass occurs later through the merging of smaller galaxies that are already old (e.g., De Lucia & Blaizot 2007).”
• Galactic star formation and accretion histories from matching galaxies to dark matter haloes (2012, methodology): “This analysis is related to previous studies that employed semi-analytic models (De Lucia et al. 2006; De Lucia & Blaizot 2007; Guo & White 2008).”
• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. II. Formation of Red Ellipticals (2007, background): “…and feedback processes and comparing the predictions with observed galaxy populations (e.g., Kauffmann&Haehnelt 2000; Somerville et al. 2001; Benson et al. 2003; Khochfar & Burkert 2003; Granato et al. 2004; Scannapieco & Oh 2004; Kang et al. 2005; De Lucia & Blaizot 2007; Monaco et al. 2007).”
• Dynamical friction and galaxy merging time-scales (2007, methodology): “In order to provide a better match to simulations or observations, some groups adjust the normalization of τmerge by setting fdf 6= 1 (e.g., de Lucia & Blaizot 2007, fdf = 2; Bower et al. 2006, fdf = 1.5; and Nagashima et al. 2005, fdf = 0.8).”
• THE ARECIBO LEGACY FAST ALFA SURVEY. X. THE H i MASS FUNCTION AND FROM THE 40% ALFALFA SURVEY (2010, methodology): “Comparison with Simulations Obreschkow et al. (2009) (hereafter O09) used the Millennium Simulation catalog, the De Lucia & Blaizot (2007) virtual catalog of galaxies, and a physicallymotivated prescription to assign realistic gas (HI, He and H2) masses at a range of redshifts.”
• Galaxies in a simulated ΛCDM universe – II. Observable properties and constraints on feedback (2009, background): “Such a scenario is a natural consequence of hierarchical halo and galaxy formation, and this ‘downsizing’ effect is ubiquitous in both cosmological simulations (Dave 2006) and SAMs of galaxy formation (De Lucia & Blaizot 2007).”
• The relation between metallicity, stellar mass and star formation in galaxies: an analysis of observational and model data (2011, methodology): “The model used in our study is the most recent version of L-GALAXIES (Guo et al. 2011), which is developed from previous versions of the code (De Lucia, Kauffmann & White 2004; Croton et al. 2006; De Lucia & Blaizot 2007).”
• Erratum: From dwarf spheroidals to cD galaxies: simulating the galaxy population in a ΛCDM cosmology (2010, methodology): “The merger trees which are the basis for our galaxy formation modelling are then constructed by linking each subhalo found in a given output to one and only one descendent at the following output (Springel et al. 2005; De Lucia & Blaizot 2007; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2009).”
• One simulation to fit them all - changing the background parameters of a cosmological N-body simulation (2009, methodology): “The specific model we use in this paper is that developed by the Munich group as described in De Lucia & Blaizot (2007), with the parameters of Wang et al. (2008).”
• Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, methodology): “Other SAMs (De Lucia & Blaizot 2007, Guo et al. 2011, Porter et al. 2014) make a more moderate assumption, that just enough stars or stars and gas are moved from the disk to the spheroid to return the system to stability.”
• Local gravity versus local velocity: solutions for β and non-linear bias (2010, methodology): “A parent-simulated catalogue of the whole 2MASS catalogue has already been prepared (De Lucia & Blaizot 2007) by incorporating semi-analytic galaxy formation models in the Millennium simulation (Springel et al. 2005).”
• Bulge mass is king: the dominant role of the bulge in determining the fraction of passive galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2014, background): “…of the stellar mass function at high masses, and thus shut off star formation in these systems, preventing super-massive galaxies from forming (Croton et al. 2006, Bower et al. 2006, de Lucia et al. 2006, de Lucia & Blaizot 2007, Bower et al. 2008, Guo et al. 2011, Vogelberger et al. 2013).”