Galactic star formation and accretion histories from matching galaxies to dark matter haloes

By B. Moster, T. Naab, Simon D. M. White. 2012

1,081 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a new statistical method to determine the relationship between the stellar masses of galaxies and the masses of their host dark matter haloes over the entire cosmic history from z � 4 to the present. This multi-epoch abundance matching (MEAM) model self-consistently takes into account that satellite galaxies first become satellites at times earlier than they are observed. We employ a redshift-dependent parameterization of the stellar-to-halo mass relation to populate haloes and subhaloes in the Millennium simulations with galaxies, requiring that the observed stellar mass functions at several redshifts be reproduced simultaneously. We show that physically meaningful growth of massive galaxies is consistent with these data only if observational mass errors are taken into account. Using merger trees extracted from the dark matter simulations in combination with MEAM, we predict the average assembly histories of galaxies, separating into star formation within the galaxies (in-situ) and accretion of stars (ex-situ). Our main results are: The peak star formation efficiency decreases with redshift from 23 per cent at z = 0 to 9 per cent at z = 4 while the corresponding halo mass increases from 10 11.8 M⊙ to 10 12.5 M⊙. The star formation rate of central galaxies peaks at a redshift which depends on halo mass; for massive haloes this peak is at early cosmic times while for low-mass galaxies the peak has not been reached yet. In haloes similar to that of the Milky-Way about half of the central stellar mass is assembled after z = 0.7. In low-mass haloes, the accretion of satellites contributes little to the assembly of their central galaxies, while in massive haloes more than half of the central stellar mass is formed ex-situ with significant accretion of satellites at z < 2. We find that our method implies a cosmic star formation history and an evolution of specific star formation rates which are consistent with those inferred directly. We present convenient fitting functions for stellar masses, star formation rates, and accretion rates as functions of halo mass and redshift.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8d064f004e9cafc6578036e938a48eb85871f2b6

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Citations in the corpus

The COSMOS2015 galaxy stellar mass function . Thirteen billion years of stellar mass assembly in ten snapshots (2017, methodology): “A nearly constant SHMR for Mh > M?h is at odds with Behroozi et al. (2013) and Moster et al. (2013) results, but a few caveats concerning those two studies should be noted.”
The Auriga Project: the properties and formation mechanisms of disc galaxies across cosmic time (2016, methodology): “21), we note that the haloes evolve almost parallel to the Moster et al. (2013) relation; however, they lie noticeably above the relation at z = 3, which indicates an excess of early star formation at even earlier epochs.”
Galaxy evolution in groups and clusters: satellite star formation histories and quenching time-scales in a hierarchical Universe (2012, background): “…Mmax for both satellite and central subhalos, may not be fully accurate in assigning stellar mass to both satellite and central subhalos simultaneously, because there is some freedom in allowing satellites to follow a different relation (Neistein et al. 2011; Yang et al. 2012; Moster et al. 2013).”
Galaxy Protoclusters as Drivers of Cosmic Star Formation History in the First 2 Gyr (2017, background): “The SFE, however, peaks in halos of about 1012 M due to various feedback processes at both lower and higher masses (Behroozi et al. 2013a; 13 11 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Age of the Universe [Gyr] Moster et al. 2013).”
The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: calibration of subgrid physics and model variations (2015, methodology): “The dark and light grey lines represent the median stellar mass-to-halo mass ratios inferred from the abundance matching algorithms of Behroozi et al. (2013) and Moster et al. (2013), respectively.”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, methodology): “From abundance matching, the mstar −Mhalo relation is constrained to evolve mildly with redshift (Behroozi et al. 2013a, Moster et al. 2013).”
First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the stellar mass content of groups and clusters of galaxies (2017, background): “We contrast our TNG results to the outcome of abundance matching and other semi-empirical models (Behroozi et al. 2013; Moster et al. 2013; Kravtsov et al. 2014; Rodrı́guez-Puebla et al. 2017; Moster et al. 2017, the latter two denoted as SHARC and EMERGE, respectively).”
Gravitational probes of dark matter physics (2017, methodology): “[151] (Figure 8) assuming CDM NFW profiles, and the magenta shaded region is vc(r) assuming cored profiles.”
Stellar Mass—Halo Mass Relation and Star Formation Efficiency in High-Mass Halos (2014, methodology): “…in reproducing the observed luminosity dependence of galaxy clustering (Kravtsov et al. 2004; Tasitsiomi et al. 2004; Conroy et al. 2006; Reddick et al. 2013) and other statistics (Vale & Ostriker 2004, 2006; Behroozi et al. 2010, 2013a; Guo et al. 2010; Moster et al. 2013; Hearin et al. 2013).”
Dark Matter Substructure in Numerical Simulations: A Tale of Discreteness Noise, Runaway Instabilities, and Artificial Disruption (2018, methodology): “…underlies the popular technique of subhalo abundance matching (e.g., Vale & Ostriker 2004; Conroy et al. 2006; Guo et al. 2010; Hearin et al. 2013; Moster et al. 2013; Behroozi et al. 2013), which has become a prime tool for interpreting galaxy clustering, galaxy-galaxy lensing, and group…”
The total mass of the Large Magellanic Cloud from its perturbation on the Orphan stream (2018, methodology): “Finally, abundance matching (Moster et al. 2013; Behroozi, Wechsler & Conroy 2013) based on the LMC’s stellar mass of 2.7 × 109 M (van der Marel 2006) gives a peak halo mass of 2 × 1011 M .”
simba: Cosmological simulations with black hole growth and feedback (2019, background): “…that (under the abundance-matching ansatz) the stellar-to-halo mass ratio drops quickly to low and high masses away from the peak at L∗ (e.g. Moster et al. 2013; Behroozi et al. 2013), and current models attribute this to self-regulation by star formationdriven feedback below L∗ and…”
NIHAO project – I. Reproducing the inefficiency of galaxy formation across cosmic time with a large sample of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations (2015, background): “5 shows the relation between stellar mass and virial mass for our simulated central galaxies compared to results from three different halo abundance matching measurements: Behroozi et al. (2013), Moster et al. (2013), and Kravtsov et al. (2014).”
Structural and Star-forming Relations since z ∼ 3: Connecting Compact Star-forming and Quiescent Galaxies (2015, methodology): “Here we adopt the evolutionary tracks of Moster et al. (2013) determined from semi-analytic models, with average mass growth of ∆M⋆ = 0.7 dex from z = 2.5 to z = 0.75.”
EVIDENCE FOR WIDE-SPREAD ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS-DRIVEN OUTFLOWS IN THE MOST MASSIVE z ∼ 1–2 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2014, background): “…mass near 1012 M this baryon fraction is only about 20% (of the cosmic baryon abundance), and the efficiency drops to even lower values on either side of this mass (e.g., Madau et al. 1996; Baldry et al. 2008; Conroy & Wechsler 2009; Guo et al. 2010; Moster et al. 2010, 2013; Behroozi et al. 2013).”