skip to main content


Title: Quantifying Scatter in Galaxy Formation at the Lowest Masses
Abstract We predict the stellar mass–halo mass (SMHM) relationship for dwarf galaxies, using simulated galaxies with peak halo masses of M peak = 10 11 M ⊙ down into the ultra-faint dwarf range to M peak = 10 7 M ⊙ . Our simulated dwarfs have stellar masses of M star = 790 M ⊙ to 8.2 × 10 8 M ⊙ , with corresponding V -band magnitudes from −2 to −18.5. For M peak > 10 10 M ⊙ , the simulated SMHM relationship agrees with literature determinations, including exhibiting a small scatter of 0.3 dex. However, the scatter in the SMHM relation increases for lower-mass halos. We first present results for well-resolved halos that contain a simulated stellar population, but recognize that whether a halo hosts a galaxy is inherently mass resolution dependent. We thus adopt a probabilistic model to populate “dark” halos below our resolution limit to predict an “intrinsic” slope and scatter for the SMHM relation. We fit linearly growing log-normal scatter in stellar mass, which grows to more than 1 dex at M peak = 10 8 M ⊙ . At the faintest end of the SMHM relation probed by our simulations, a galaxy cannot be assigned a unique halo mass based solely on its luminosity. Instead, we provide a formula to stochastically populate low-mass halos following our results. Finally, we show that our growing log-normal scatter steepens the faint-end slope of the predicted stellar mass function.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2013909 1813871
PAR ID:
10348522
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
The Astrophysical Journal
Volume:
923
Issue:
1
ISSN:
0004-637X
Page Range / eLocation ID:
35
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ABSTRACT

    We present a photometric halo mass estimation technique for local galaxies that enables us to establish the stellar mass–halo mass (SMHM) relation down to stellar masses of 105 M⊙. We find no detectable differences among the SMHM relations of four local galaxy clusters or between the cluster and field relations and we find agreement with extrapolations of previous SMHM relations derived using abundance matching approaches. We fit a power law to our empirical SMHM relation and find that for adopted NFW dark matter profiles and for M* < 109 M⊙, the halo mass is Mh = 1010.35 ± 0.02(M*/108 M⊙)0.63 ± 0.02. The normalization of this relation is susceptible to systematic modelling errors that depend on the adopted dark matter potential and the quoted uncertainties refer to the uncertainties in the median relation. For galaxies with M* < 109 M⊙ that satisfy our selection criteria, the scatter about the fit in Mh, including uncertainties arising from our methodology, is 0.3 dex. Finally, we place lower luminosity Local Group galaxies on the SMHM relationship using the same technique, extending it to M* ∼ 103 M⊙ and suggest that some of these galaxies show evidence for additional mass interior to the effective radius beyond that provided by the standard dark matter profile. If this mass is in the form of a central black hole, the black hole masses are in the range of intermediate mass black holes, 10(5.7 ± 0.6) M⊙, which corresponds to masses of a few percent of Mh, well above values extrapolated from the relationships describing more massive galaxies.

     
    more » « less
  2. Abstract

    The connection between galaxies and dark matter halos is often quantified using the stellar mass–halo mass (SMHM) relation. Optical and near-infrared imaging surveys have led to a broadly consistent picture of the evolving SMHM relation based on measurements of galaxy abundances and angular correlation functions. Spectroscopic surveys atz≳ 2 can also constrain the SMHM relation via the galaxy autocorrelation function and through the cross-correlation between galaxies and Lyαabsorption measured in transverse sight lines; however, such studies are very few and have produced some unexpected or inconclusive results. We use ∼3000 spectra ofz∼ 2.5 galaxies from the LyαTomography IMACS Survey (LATIS) to measure the galaxy–galaxy and galaxy–Lyαcorrelation functions in four bins of stellar mass spanning 109.2M*/M≲ 1010.5. Parallel analyses of the MultiDarkN-body and ASTRID hydrodynamic cosmological simulations allow us to model the correlation functions, estimate covariance matrices, and infer halo masses. We find that results of the two methods are mutually consistent and broadly accord with standard SMHM relations. This consistency demonstrates that we are able to measure and model Lyαtransmission fluctuationsδFin LATIS accurately. We also show that the galaxy–Lyαcross-correlation, a free by-product of optical spectroscopic galaxy surveys at these redshifts, can constrain halo masses with similar precision to galaxy–galaxy clustering.

     
    more » « less
  3. ABSTRACT

    Galaxy sizes correlate closely with the sizes of their parent dark matter haloes, suggesting a link between halo formation and galaxy growth. However, the precise nature of this relation and its scatter remains to be understood fully, especially for low-mass galaxies. We analyse the galaxy–halo size relation (GHSR) for low-mass ($M_\star \sim 10^{7-9}\, {\rm M}_\odot$) central galaxies over the past 12.5 billion years with the help of cosmological volume simulations (FIREbox) from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) project. We find a nearly linear relationship between the half-stellar mass galaxy size R1/2 and the parent dark matter halo virial radius Rvir. This relation evolves only weakly since redshift z = 5: $R_{1/2}\, [{\rm kpc}] = (0.053\pm 0.002)(R_{\rm vir}/35\, {\rm kpc})^{0.934\pm 0.054}$, with a nearly constant scatter $\langle \sigma \rangle = 0.084\, [{\rm dex}]$. While this ratio is similar to what is expected from models where galaxy disc sizes are set by halo angular momentum, the low-mass galaxies in our sample are not angular momentum supported, with stellar rotational to circular velocity ratios vrot/vcirc ∼ 0.15. Introducing redshift as another parameter to the GHSR does not decrease the scatter. Furthermore, this scatter does not correlate with any of the halo properties we investigate – including spin and concentration – suggesting that baryonic processes and feedback physics are instead critical in setting the scatter in the GHSR. Given the relatively small scatter and the weak dependence of the GHSR on redshift and halo properties for these low-mass central galaxies, we propose using galaxy sizes as an independent method from stellar masses to infer halo masses.

     
    more » « less
  4. ABSTRACT

    We use GRUMPY, a simple regulator-type model for dwarf galaxy formation and evolution, to forward model the dwarf galaxy satellite population of the Milky Way (MW) using the Caterpillar zoom-in simulation suite. We show that luminosity and distance distributions of the model satellites are consistent with the distributions measured in the DES, PS1, and SDSS surveys, even without including a model for the orphan galaxies. We also show that our model for dwarf galaxy sizes can simultaneously reproduce the observed distribution of stellar half-mass radii, r1/2, of the MW satellites and the overall r1/2–M⋆ relation exhibited by observed dwarf galaxies. The model predicts that some of the observed faint stellar systems with r1/2 < 10 pc are ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. Scaling of the stellar mass M⋆ and peak halo mass Mpeak for the model satellites is not described by a power law, but has a clear flattening of M⋆–Mpeak scaling at $M_{\rm peak}\lt 10^8\, \, M_{\odot }$ imprinted by reionization. As a result, the fraction of low mass haloes ($M_{\rm peak}\lt 10^8 \, M_{\odot }$) hosting galaxies with MV < 0 is predicted to be 50 per cent at $M_{\rm peak}\sim 3.6 \times 10^7\, \, M_{\odot }$. We find that such high fraction at that halo mass helps to reproduce the number of dwarf galaxies discovered recently in the HSC-SSP survey. Using the model we forecast that there should be the total of $440^{+201}_{-147}$ (68 per cent confidence interval) MW satellites with MV < 0 and r1/2 > 10 pc within 300 kpc and make specific predictions for the HSC-SSP, DELVE-WIDE, and LSST surveys.

     
    more » « less
  5. ABSTRACT

    We present a novel approach to extracting dwarf galaxies from photometric data to measure their average halo mass profile with weak lensing. We characterize their stellar mass and redshift distributions with a spectroscopic calibration sample. By combining the ${\sim} 5000\,\mathrm{deg}^2$ multiband photometry from the Dark Energy Survey and redshifts from the Satellites Around Galactic Analogs Survey with an unsupervised machine learning method, we select a low-mass galaxy sample spanning redshifts $z\lt 0.3$ and divide it into three mass bins. From low to high median mass, the bins contain [146 420, 330 146, 275 028] galaxies and have median stellar masses of $\log _{10}(M_*/\text{M}_\odot)=\left[8.52\substack{+0.57 -0.76},\, 9.02\substack{+0.50 -0.64},\, 9.49\substack{+0.50 -0.58}\right]$ . We measure the stacked excess surface mass density profiles, $\Delta \Sigma (R)$, of these galaxies using galaxy–galaxy lensing with a signal-to-noise ratio of [14, 23, 28]. Through a simulation-based forward-modelling approach, we fit the measurements to constrain the stellar-to-halo mass relation and find the median halo mass of these samples to be $\log _{10}(M_{\rm halo}/\text{M}_\odot)$ = [$10.67\substack{+0.2 -0.4}$, $11.01\substack{+0.14 -0.27}$, $11.40\substack{+0.08 -0.15}$]. The cold dark matter profiles are consistent with NFW (Navarro, Frenk, and White) profiles over scales ${\lesssim} 0.15 \, {h}^{-1}$ Mpc. We find that ${\sim} 20$ per cent of the dwarf galaxy sample are satellites. This is the first measurement of the halo profiles and masses of such a comprehensive, low-mass galaxy sample. The techniques presented here pave the way for extracting and analysing even lower mass dwarf galaxies and for more finely splitting galaxies by their properties with future photometric and spectroscopic survey data.

     
    more » « less