scholarly journals Mock Lightcones and Theory Friendly Catalogs for the CANDELS Survey

Author(s):  
Rachel S Somerville ◽  
Charlotte Olsen ◽  
L Y Aaron Yung ◽  
Camilla Pacifici ◽  
Henry C Ferguson ◽  
...  

Abstract We present mock catalogs created to support the interpretation of the CANDELS survey. We extract halos along past lightcones from the Bolshoi Planck dissipationless N-body simulations and populate these halos with galaxies using two different independently developed semi-analytic models of galaxy formation and the empirical model UniverseMachine. Our mock catalogs have geometries that encompass the footprints of observations associated with the five CANDELS fields. In order to allow field-to-field variance to be explored, we have created eight realizations of each field. In this paper, we present comparisons with observable global galaxy properties, including counts in observed frame bands, luminosity functions, color-magnitude distributions and color-color distributions. We additionally present comparisons with physical galaxy parameters derived from SED fitting for the CANDELS observations, such as stellar masses and star formation rates. We find relatively good agreement between the model predictions and CANDELS observations for luminosity and stellar mass functions. We find poorer agreement for colors and star formation rate distributions. All of the mock lightcones as well as curated “theory friendly” versions of the observational CANDELS catalogs are made available through a web-based data hub.

2020 ◽  
Vol 499 (4) ◽  
pp. 5702-5718
Author(s):  
Peter Behroozi ◽  
Charlie Conroy ◽  
Risa H Wechsler ◽  
Andrew Hearin ◽  
Christina C Williams ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to observe galaxies at z > 10 that are presently inaccessible. Here, we use a self-consistent empirical model, the universemachine, to generate mock galaxy catalogues and light-cones over the redshift range z = 0−15. These data include realistic galaxy properties (stellar masses, star formation rates, and UV luminosities), galaxy–halo relationships, and galaxy–galaxy clustering. Mock observables are also provided for different model parameters spanning observational uncertainties at z < 10. We predict that Cycle 1 JWST surveys will very likely detect galaxies with M* > 107 M⊙ and/or M1500 < −17 out to at least z ∼ 13.5. Number density uncertainties at z > 12 expand dramatically, so efforts to detect z > 12 galaxies will provide the most valuable constraints on galaxy formation models. The faint-end slopes of the stellar mass/luminosity functions at a given mass/luminosity threshold steepen as redshift increases. This is because observable galaxies are hosted by haloes in the exponentially falling regime of the halo mass function at high redshifts. Hence, these faint-end slopes are robustly predicted to become shallower below current observable limits (M* < 107 M⊙ or M1500 > −17). For reionization models, extrapolating luminosity functions with a constant faint-end slope from M1500 = −17 down to M1500 = −12 gives the most reasonable upper limit for the total UV luminosity and cosmic star formation rate up to z ∼ 12. We compare to three other empirical models and one semi-analytic model, showing that the range of predicted observables from our approach encompasses predictions from other techniques. Public catalogues and light-cones for common fields are available online.


2019 ◽  
Vol 487 (2) ◽  
pp. 1529-1550 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedikt Diemer ◽  
Adam R H Stevens ◽  
Claudia del P Lagos ◽  
A R Calette ◽  
Sandro Tacchella ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We have recently developed a post-processing framework to estimate the abundance of atomic and molecular hydrogen (H i and H2, respectively) in galaxies in large-volume cosmological simulations. Here we compare the H i and H2 content of IllustrisTNG galaxies to observations. We mostly restrict this comparison to z ≈ 0 and consider six observational metrics: the overall abundance of H i and H2, their mass functions, gas fractions as a function of stellar mass, the correlation between H2 and star formation rate, the spatial distribution of gas, and the correlation between gas content and morphology. We find generally good agreement between simulations and observations, particularly for the gas fractions and the H i mass–size relation. The H2 mass correlates with star formation rate as expected, revealing an almost constant depletion time that evolves up to z = 2 as observed. However, we also discover a number of tensions with varying degrees of significance, including an overestimate of the total neutral gas abundance at z = 0 by about a factor of 2 and a possible excess of satellites with no or very little neutral gas. These conclusions are robust to the modelling of the H i/H2 transition. In terms of their neutral gas properties, the IllustrisTNG simulations represent an enormous improvement over the original Illustris run. All data used in this paper are publicly available as part of the IllustrisTNG data release.


2019 ◽  
Vol 489 (1) ◽  
pp. 1357-1372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yisheng Qiu ◽  
Simon J Mutch ◽  
Elisabete da Cunha ◽  
Gregory B Poole ◽  
J Stuart B Wyithe

ABSTRACT We present a new analysis of high-redshift UV observations using a semi-analytic galaxy formation model, and provide self-consistent predictions of the infrared excess (IRX)–β relations and cosmic star formation rate density. We combine the Charlot & Fall dust attenuation model with the meraxes semi-analytic model, and explore three different parametrizations for the dust optical depths, linked to star formation rate, dust-to-gas ratio, and gas column density, respectively. A Bayesian approach is employed to statistically calibrate model-free parameters including star formation efficiency, mass loading factor, dust optical depths, and reddening slope directly against UV luminosity functions and colour–magnitude relations at $z$ ∼ 4–7. The best-fitting models show excellent agreement with the observations. We calculate IRX using energy balance arguments and find that the large intrinsic scatter in the IRX–β plane correlates with specific star formation rate. Additionally, the difference among the three dust models suggests at least a factor of 2 systematic uncertainty in the dust-corrected star formation rate when using the Meurer IRX–β relation at $z$ ≳ 4.


2020 ◽  
Vol 500 (3) ◽  
pp. 3394-3412
Author(s):  
Steven R Furlanetto

ABSTRACT In recent years, simple models of galaxy formation have been shown to provide reasonably good matches to available data on high-redshift luminosity functions. However, these prescriptions are primarily phenomenological, with only crude connections to the physics of galaxy evolution. Here, we introduce a set of galaxy models that are based on a simple physical framework but incorporate more sophisticated models of feedback, star formation, and other processes. We apply these models to the high-redshift regime, showing that most of the generic predictions of the simplest models remain valid. In particular, the stellar mass–halo mass relation depends almost entirely on the physics of feedback (and is thus independent of the details of small-scale star formation) and the specific star formation rate is a simple multiple of the cosmological accretion rate. We also show that, in contrast, the galaxy’s gas mass is sensitive to the physics of star formation, although the inclusion of feedback-driven star formation laws significantly changes the naive expectations. While these models are far from detailed enough to describe every aspect of galaxy formation, they inform our understanding of galaxy formation by illustrating several generic aspects of that process, and they provide a physically grounded basis for extrapolating predictions to faint galaxies and high redshifts currently out of reach of observations. If observations show violations from these simple trends, they would indicate new physics occurring inside the earliest generations of galaxies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S356) ◽  
pp. 295-298
Author(s):  
Betelehem Bilata-Woldeyes ◽  
Mirjana Pović ◽  
Zeleke Beyoro-Amado ◽  
Tilahun Getachew-Woreta ◽  
Shimeles Terefe

AbstractStudying the morphology of a large sample of active galaxies at different wavelengths and comparing it with active galactic nuclei (AGN) properties, such as black hole mass (MBH) and Eddington ratio (λEdd), can help us in understanding better the connection between AGN and their host galaxies and the role of nuclear activity in galaxy formation and evolution. By using the BAT-SWIFT hard X-ray public data and by extracting those parameters measured for AGN and by using other public catalogues for parameters such as stellar mass (M*), star formation rate (SFR), bolometric luminosity (Lbol), etc., we studied the multiwavelength morphological properties of host galaxies of ultra-hard X-ray detected AGN and their correlation with other AGN properties. We found that ultra hard X-ray detected AGN can be hosted by all morphological types, but in larger fractions (42%) they seem to be hosted by spirals in optical, to be quiet in radio, and to have compact morphologies in X-rays. When comparing morphologies with other galaxy properties, we found that ultra hard X-ray detected AGN follow previously obtained relations. On the SFR vs. stellar mass diagram, we found that although the majority of sources are located below the main sequence (MS) of star formation (SF), still non-negligible number of sources, with diverse morphologies, is located on and/or above the MS, suggesting that AGN feedback might have more complex influence on the SF in galaxies than simply quenching it, as it was suggested in some of previous studies.


Author(s):  
P Bonfini ◽  
A Zezas ◽  
M L N Ashby ◽  
S P Willner ◽  
A Maragkoudakis ◽  
...  

Abstract We constrain the mass distribution in nearby, star-forming galaxies with the Star Formation Reference Survey (SFRS), a galaxy sample constructed to be representative of all known combinations of star formation rate (SFR), dust temperature, and specific star formation rate (sSFR) that exist in the Local Universe. An innovative two-dimensional bulge/disk decomposition of the 2MASS/Ks-band images of the SFRS galaxies yields global luminosity and stellar mass functions, along with separate mass functions for their bulges and disks. These accurate mass functions cover the full range from dwarf galaxies to large spirals, and are representative of star-forming galaxies selected based on their infra-red luminosity, unbiased by AGN content and environment. We measure an integrated luminosity density j = 1.72 ± 0.93 × 109 L⊙  h−1 Mpc−3 and a total stellar mass density ρM = 4.61 ± 2.40 × 108 M⊙  h−1 Mpc−3. While the stellar mass of the average star-forming galaxy is equally distributed between its sub-components, disks globally dominate the mass density budget by a ratio 4:1 with respect to bulges. In particular, our functions suggest that recent star formation happened primarily in massive systems, where they have yielded a disk stellar mass density larger than that of bulges by more than 1 dex. Our results constitute a reference benchmark for models addressing the assembly of stellar mass on the bulges and disks of local (z = 0) star-forming galaxies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (2) ◽  
pp. 1888-1906 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan A Terrazas ◽  
Eric F Bell ◽  
Annalisa Pillepich ◽  
Dylan Nelson ◽  
Rachel S Somerville ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Supermassive black hole feedback is thought to be responsible for the lack of star formation, or quiescence, in a significant fraction of galaxies. We explore how observable correlations between the specific star formation rate (sSFR), stellar mass (Mstar), and black hole mass (MBH) are sensitive to the physics of black hole feedback in a galaxy formation model. We use the IllustrisTNG simulation suite, specifically the TNG100 simulation and 10 model variations that alter the parameters of the black hole model. Focusing on central galaxies at z = 0 with Mstar > 1010 M⊙, we find that the sSFR of galaxies in IllustrisTNG decreases once the energy from black hole kinetic winds at low accretion rates becomes larger than the gravitational binding energy of gas within the galaxy stellar radius. This occurs at a particular MBH threshold above which galaxies are found to sharply transition from being mostly star forming to mostly quiescent. As a result of this behaviour, the fraction of quiescent galaxies as a function of Mstar is sensitive to both the normalization of the MBH–Mstar relation and the MBH threshold for quiescence in IllustrisTNG. Finally, we compare these model results to observations of 91 central galaxies with dynamical MBH measurements with the caveat that this sample is not representative of the whole galaxy population. While IllustrisTNG reproduces the observed trend that quiescent galaxies host more massive black holes, the observations exhibit a broader scatter in MBH at a given Mstar and show a smoother decline in sSFR with MBH.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (A29B) ◽  
pp. 717-718
Author(s):  
Nate Bastian

AbstractWe review some of the basic population properties of stellar clusters, as well as how they relate to star-formation more broadly within their host galaxies. Despite the common assertion, the vast majority of stars do not form within stellar clusters. For typical galaxies (including the solar neighbourhood), the fraction of stars forming in clusters is ~10%. There are indications however that this fraction increases as a function of increasing star-formation rate surface density, in agreement with model predictions (based on a turbulent ISM and relatively straight-forward prescriptions of star-formation).


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S352) ◽  
pp. 99-102
Author(s):  
Joel Leja ◽  
Benjamin D. Johnson ◽  
Charlie Conroy ◽  
Pieter van Dokkum ◽  
Joshua S. Speagle ◽  
...  

AbstractGalaxies are complicated physical systems which obey complex scaling relationships; as a result, properties measured from broadband photometry are often highly correlated, degenerate, or both. Therefore, the accuracy of basic properties like stellar masses and star formation rates (SFRs) depend on the accuracy of many second-order galaxy properties, including star formation histories (SFHs), stellar metallicities, dust properties, and many others. Here, we re-assess measurements of galaxy stellar masses and SFRs using a 14-parameter physical model built in the Prospector Bayesian inference framework. We find that galaxies are ∼0.2 dex more massive and have ∼0.2 dex lower star formation rates than classic measurements. These measurements lower the observed cosmic star formation rate density and increase the observed buildup of stellar mass, finally bringing these two metrics into agreement at the factor-of-two level at 0.5 < z < 2.5.


2020 ◽  
Vol 492 (2) ◽  
pp. 2835-2846 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sultan Hassan ◽  
Kristian Finlator ◽  
Romeel Davé ◽  
Christopher W Churchill ◽  
J Xavier Prochaska

ABSTRACT We examine the properties of damped Lyman-α absorbers (DLAs) emerging from a single set of cosmological initial conditions in two state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamic simulations: simba and technicolor dawn. The former includes star formation and black hole feedback treatments that yield a good match with low-redshift galaxy properties, while the latter uses multifrequency radiative transfer to model an inhomogeneous ultraviolet background (UVB) self-consistently and is calibrated to match the Thomson scattering optical depth, UVB amplitude, and Ly α forest mean transmission at z &gt; 5. Both simulations are in reasonable agreement with the measured stellar mass and star formation rate functions at z ≥ 3, and both reproduce the observed neutral hydrogen cosmological mass density, $\Omega _{\rm H\, \small{I}}(z)$. However, the DLA abundance and metallicity distribution are sensitive to the galactic outflows’ feedback and the UVB amplitude. Adopting a strong UVB and/or slow outflows underproduces the observed DLA abundance, but yields broad agreement with the observed DLA metallicity distribution. By contrast, faster outflows eject metals to larger distances, yielding more metal-rich DLAs whose observational selection may be more sensitive to dust bias. The DLA metallicity distribution in models adopting an H2-regulated star formation recipe includes a tail extending to [M/H] ≪ −3, lower than any DLA observed to date, owing to curtailed star formation in low-metallicity galaxies. Our results show that DLA observations play an important role in constraining key physical ingredients in galaxy formation models, complementing traditional ensemble statistics such as the stellar mass and star formation rate functions.


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