Realistic mock observations of the sizes and stellar mass surface densities of massive galaxies in FIRE-2 zoom-in simulations
ABSTRACT The galaxy size–stellar mass and central surface density–stellar mass relationships are fundamental observational constraints on galaxy formation models. However, inferring the physical size of a galaxy from observed stellar emission is non-trivial due to various observational effects, such as the mass-to-light ratio variations that can be caused by non-uniform stellar ages, metallicities, and dust attenuation. Consequently, forward-modelling light-based sizes from simulations is desirable. In this work, we use the skirt  dust radiative transfer code to generate synthetic observations of massive galaxies ($M_{*}\sim 10^{11}\, \rm {M_{\odot }}$ at z = 2, hosted by haloes of mass $M_{\rm {halo}}\sim 10^{12.5}\, \rm {M_{\odot }}$) from high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations that form part of the Feedback In Realistic Environments project. The simulations used in this paper include explicit stellar feedback but no active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback. From each mock observation, we infer the effective radius (Re), as well as the stellar mass surface density within this radius and within $1\, \rm {kpc}$ (Σe and Σ1, respectively). We first investigate how well the intrinsic half-mass radius and stellar mass surface density can be inferred from observables. The majority of predicted sizes and surface densities are within a factor of 2 of the intrinsic values. more »
Authors:
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Award ID(s):
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10237289
Journal Name:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume:
501
Issue:
2
Page Range or eLocation-ID:
1591 to 1602
ISSN:
0035-8711
National Science Foundation
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