THE CONNECTION BETWEEN GALAXIES AND DARK MATTER STRUCTURES IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE

By Rachel Reddick, Risa Wechsler, J. Tinker, P. Behroozi. 2012

281 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We provide new constraints on the connection between galaxies in the local universe, identified by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and dark matter halos and their constituent substructures in the Λ-cold dark matter model using WMAP7 cosmological parameters. Predictions for the abundance and clustering properties of dark matter halos, and the relationship between dark matter hosts and substructures, are based on a high-resolution cosmological simulation, the Bolshoi simulation. We associate galaxies with dark matter halos and subhalos using subhalo abundance matching, and perform a comprehensive analysis which investigates the underlying assumptions of this technique including (1) which halo property is most closely associated with galaxy stellar masses and luminosities, (2) how much scatter is in this relationship, and (3) how much subhalos can be stripped before their galaxies are destroyed. The models are jointly constrained by new measurements of the projected two-point galaxy clustering and the observed conditional stellar mass function of galaxies in groups. We find that an abundance matching model that associates galaxies with the peak circular velocity of their halos is in good agreement with the data, when scatter of 0.20 ± 0.03 dex in stellar mass at a given peak velocity is included. This confirms the theoretical expectation that the stellar mass of galaxies is tightly correlated with the potential wells of their dark matter halos before they are impacted by larger structures. The data put tight constraints on the satellite fraction of galaxies as a function of galaxy stellar mass and on the scatter between halo and galaxy properties, and rule out several alternative abundance matching models that have been considered. This will yield important constraints for galaxy formation models, and also provides encouraging indications that the galaxy–halo connection can be modeled with sufficient fidelity for future precision studies of the dark universe.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fbb51b418b40648c15d077066525186df8fb189b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

The SAGA Survey. I. Satellite Galaxy Populations around Eight Milky Way Analogs (2017, background): “We assume a 0.15 dex scatter in luminosity at fixed halo Vpeak (see e.g., Reddick et al. 2013; Gu et al. 2016; Lehmann et al. 2017, for current 2 bitbucket.org/yymao/abundancematching constraints on the scatter).”
Mapping stellar content to dark matter haloes using galaxy clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing in the SDSS DR7 (2015, background): “…masses of their subhalos were reduced due to the combined effect of tidal stripping and dynamical friction, whereas their stellar masses in the centre of those subhalos were much less affected and are thus more closely tied to the infall masses (Reddick et al. 2013; van den Bosch et al. 2005).”
The upper bound on the lowest mass halo (2016, methodology): “In order to assign stellar mass to dark matter halos, we first must decide which halo properties we wish to relate to stellar mass. Reddick et al. (2013) investigated the difference between using halo virial mass, Mvir, or maximum circular velocity, vmax, defined at either z = zpeak (the redshift…”
First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the stellar mass content of groups and clusters of galaxies (2017, result): “Combined with the results of N-body simulations, several observational estimates of the scatter have been made (More et al. 2011; Leauthaud et al. 2012; Reddick et al. 2013; Zu & Mandelbaum 2016; Tinker et al. 2017).”
Not so lumpy after all: modelling the depletion of dark matter subhaloes by Milky Way-like galaxies (2017, background): “…for the use of DMO simulations to interpret small-scale (‘one-halo’) clustering statistics through subhalo abundance matching (e.g. Conroy et al. 2006; Reddick et al. 2013), as compared with studies that examined these trends for subhalo disruption without modeling a central galaxy (e.g. Wetzel…”
Stellar Mass—Halo Mass Relation and Star Formation Efficiency in High-Mass Halos (2014, background): “…to work well 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…”
Halo and subhalo demographics with Planck cosmological parameters: Bolshoi–Planck and MultiDark–Planck simulations (2016, methodology): “Note, however, that while some authors have shown that this is true for most of the scales (see e.g., Conroy, Wechsler & Kravtsov 2006; Reddick et al. 2013), others have argued that on the very small scales abundance matching fails in reproduce the observed clustering of galaxies (see e.g., Wang et…”
Galaxy assembly bias: a significant source of systematic error in the galaxy–halo relationship (2013, methodology): “This is important because there exist few validation exercises that demonstrate this fact in the literature (we are aware of only Reddick et al. (2013), but even in this case the focus is on cosmological parameters, and HOD parameters are not treated in any detail).”
Constraining the galaxy–halo connection over the last 13.3 Gyr: star formation histories, galaxy mergers and structural properties (2017, background): “Indeed, Reddick et al. (2013) found that this is the quantity that correlates best with galaxy stellar mass and luminosity by reproducing most accurately the observed galaxy clustering (see also Moster et al. 2010).”
ON THE LACK OF EVOLUTION IN GALAXY STAR FORMATION EFFICIENCY (2012, unknown): “Furthermore, the prediction in time-independent SFE models of fixed stellar mass formed at a given halo mass is not far off from observational constraints at z = 0 (0.2 dex scatter in stellar mass at fixed halo mass; Reddick et al. 2012).”
The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: modelling the clustering and halo occupation distribution of BOSS CMASS galaxies in the Final Data Release (2015, methodology): “Previous works demonstrated the impact of the scatter in the clustering signal of a mock generated with the abundance matching (e.g. Reddick et al. 2013).”
Dark Matter Substructure in Numerical Simulations: A Tale of Discreteness Noise, Runaway Instabilities, and Artificial Disruption (2018, background): “…for interpreting galaxy clustering, galaxy-galaxy lensing, and group multiplicity functions, and is even used to constrain cosmological parameters (Maŕın et al. 2008; Trujillo-Gomez et al. 2011; Hearin et al. 2015, 2016; Reddick et al. 2013, 2014; Zentner et al. 2014, 2016; Lehmann et al. 2015).”
NIHAO project – I. Reproducing the inefficiency of galaxy formation across cosmic time with a large sample of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations (2015, background): “Above a halo mass of M200 ∼ 2 × 10 10M⊙ the scatter in the relation is a constant and consistent with observational constraints of ∼ 0.2 dex (More et al. 2011; Reddick et al. 2013).”