Modelling galaxy clustering in a high-resolution simulation of structure formation

By Lang Wang, Cheng Li, G. Kauffmann, G. Lucia. 2006

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We use the Millennium Simulation, a 10 billion particle simulation of the growth of cosmic structure, to construct a new model of galaxy clustering. We adopt a methodology that falls midway between the traditional semi-analytic approach and the halo occupation distribution (HOD) approach. In our model, we adopt the positions and velocities of the galaxies that are predicted by following the orbits and merging histories of the substructures in the simulation. Rather than using star formation and feedback ‘recipes’ to specify the physical properties of the galaxies, we adopt parametrized functions to relate these properties to the quantity Minfall, defined as the mass of the halo at the epoch when the galaxy was last the central dominant object in its own halo. We test whether these parametrized relations allow us to recover the basic statistical properties of galaxies in the semi-analytic catalogues, including the luminosity function, the stellar mass function and the shape and amplitude of the two-point correlation function evaluated in different stellar mass and luminosity ranges. We then use our model to interpret recent measurements of these quantities from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data. We derive relations between the luminosities and the stellar masses of galaxies in the local Universe and their host halo masses. Our results are in excellent agreement with recent determinations of these relations by Mandelbaum et al. using galaxy‐galaxy weak lensing measurements from the SDSS.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

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Citations in the corpus

The Galaxy and its stellar halo: insights on their formation from a hybrid cosmological approach (2008, result): “We note, finally, that previous work has shown that this treatment of orphan galaxies is required in order to reproduce the correlation signal at small scales (Wang et al. 2006; Kitzbichler & White 2008).”
The distribution of stellar mass in the low‐redshift Universe (2009, result): “There have been previous studies of the first of these statistics, the so-called mass function of galaxies (e.g. Cole et al. 2001; Bell et al. 2003; Wang et al. 2006; Panter et al. 2007; Baldry et al. 2008).”
A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. II. Formation of Red Ellipticals (2007, methodology): “…mass of a disk galaxy in such a halo can be estimated empirically, either from halo occupation models (e.g., Yang et al. 2003; Conroy et al. 2006; Wang et al. 2006), adopting the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation (assuming the disk circular velocity traces maximal halo circular velocity, e.g.,…”
SIMULATIONS OF THE MAGELLANIC STREAM IN A FIRST INFALL SCENARIO (2010, methodology): “Instead, we use current halo occupation models to relate the observed stellar mass of the LMC to its original halo mass before infall into the MW halo (van den Bosch et al. 2003; Conroy et al. 2006; Wang et al. 2006).”
A semi-analytic model for the co-evolution of galaxies, black holes and active galactic nuclei (2008, methodology): “This exercise has been carried out in terms of luminosity by Kravtsov et al. (2004a), and in terms of stellar mass by Wang et al. (2006) and Moster et al. (in preparation).”
Cosmological Constraints from a Combination of Galaxy Clustering and Lensing -- III. Application to SDSS Data (2012, result): “Interestingly, such an amount of scatter is also in excellent agreement with predictions from semi-analytical models for galaxy formation (e.g., Wang et al. 2006; see also More et al. 2009).”
Galaxy evolution in groups and clusters: satellite star formation histories and quenching time-scales in a hierarchical Universe (2012, background): “…many observed galaxy statistics, including spatial clustering, satellite fractions, cluster luminosity functions, and luminosity-velocity relations (Conroy et al. 2006; Vale & Ostriker 2006; Berrier et al. 2006; Wang et al. 2006; Yang et al. 2009; Wetzel & White 2010; TrujilloGomez et al. 2011).”
THE GREATER IMPACT OF MERGERS ON THE GROWTH OF MASSIVE GALAXIES: IMPLICATIONS FOR MASS ASSEMBLY AND EVOLUTION SINCE z ≃ 1 (2009, background): “Wang et al. 2006; Mandelbaum et al. 2006) which roughly corresponds to the low-mass end of the range probed by our sample.”
Erratum: From dwarf spheroidals to cD galaxies: simulating the galaxy population in a ΛCDM cosmology (2010, unknown): “This behaviour was also present in the DLB07 model (see, Wang et al. 2006) and can be traced to the fact that low-mass satellite galaxies typically achieved their maximum halo mass at z ∼ 1, whereas for the corresponding centrals this is typically around z ∼ 0.”
The Hierarchical Build-Up of Massive Galaxies and the Intracluster Light since z = 1 (2007, background): “…recent semianalytic models (SAMs) have decoupled the dynamical evolution of subhalos from satellites when the subhalo disrupts (Croton et al. 2006; Wang et al. 2006), and hence these models produce a significant population of satellites with no identifiable subhalo (the so-called orphan…”
What determines satellite galaxy disruption (2009, methodology): “…(or infall maximum circular velocity) to assign stellar mass have been successful at reproducing various observed galaxy properties at a range of redshifts (Berrier et al. 2006; Conroy et al. 2006; Vale & Ostriker 2006; Wang et al. 2006; Yang et al. 2009), and so this is the approach we use here.”
A COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF UNCERTAINTIES AFFECTING THE STELLAR MASS–HALO MASS RELATION FOR 0 < z < 4 (2010, background): “All of these issues can potentially alter the relation between halo and stellar mass for satellites (although the modeling results of Wang et al. 2006 suggest that the halo–satellite relation is indistinguishable from the overall galaxy– halo relation).”
The Phoenix Project: the dark side of rich galaxy clusters (2012, background): “…follow the formation of galaxies with n the evolving subhalo population provide a better match to the observed inner profiles because they include a population of “orphan” galaxies whose dark matter subhaloes have already been tidally destroyed (Gao et al. 2004a; Wang et al. 2006; Guo et al. 2011).”
MERGERS IN ΛCDM: UNCERTAINTIES IN THEORETICAL PREDICTIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF THE MERGER RATE (2010, methodology): “We also compare to the results selecting the fit to M∗(Mhalo) and its scatter for central and satellite galaxies from the observed SDSS clustering atz= 0 (Wang et al. 2006); in this case, we simply adopt thez= 0 fit at all redshifts – we do not allow for evolution.”
The Frontier Fields lens modelling comparison project (2016, background): “Stellar masses and Bband luminosities are subsequently assigned to each galaxy accordingly to the mass of the dark matter (sub-)halo within which it formed, following Wang et al. (2006).”
EMERGE – an empirical model for the formation of galaxies since z ∼ 10 (2017, background): “…mass by matching the cumulative abundance of galaxies to those of haloes and subhaloes (Mo&White 1996;Wechsler et al. 1998; Vale&Ostriker 2004; Conroy,Wechsler &Kravtsov 2006; Wang et al. 2006, 2007; Moster et al. 2010; Behroozi, Conroy &Wechsler 2010; Guo et al. 2010; Trujillo-Gomez et al. 2011).”
A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. I. Galaxy Mergers and Quasar Activity (2007, methodology): “…according to an empirical halo occupation model (e.g., Tinker et al. 2005; Conroy et al. 2006; Vale & Ostriker 2006; van den Bosch et al. 2007; Wang et al. 2006)—i.e., matching the observed statistics of where galaxies of a given type live (accounting for different occupations for different…”
DISSIPATION AND EXTRA LIGHT IN GALACTIC NUCLEI. IV. EVOLUTION IN THE SCALING RELATIONS OF SPHEROIDS (2008, background): “…the elliptical population at masses. a fewL∗, the vast majority of which still live in less extreme environments (e.g. Blanton et al. 2005; Wang et al. 2006; Masjedi et al. 2006) and are expected to have experienced a small number (∼ a couple) of major re-mergers since redshiftsz ∼ 2− 4.”
MERGERS AND BULGE FORMATION IN ΛCDM: WHICH MERGERS MATTER? (2009, methodology): “We show a recent determination of these constraints, from clustering and abundance of local SDSS galaxies in Wang et al. (2006).16 Second, we show the empirical “monotonic” or “rank ordering” results: it has been shown that good fits to halo occupation statistics (group counts, correlation functio…”
How do galaxies populate dark matter haloes (2009, background): “…show that for satellite systems this latter mass is much more closely related to the stellar mass of the central galaxy than is the z = 0 mass of the subhalo, because the latter has often been very substantially reduced by tidal stripping (Gao et al. 2004; Wang et al. 2006; Font et al. 2008).”