Progenitor Halos Research Articles

Towards a universal analytical model for Population III star formation: interplay between feedback and fragmentation

ABSTRACT JWST has brought us new insights into Cosmic Dawn with tentative detection of the unique signatures of metal-free Population III (Pop III) stars, such as strong He II emission, extremely blue ultraviolet spectrum, and enhanced nitrogen abundance. Self-consistent theoretical predictions of the formation rates, sites, and masses of Pop III stars are crucial for interpreting the observations, but are challenging due to complex physical processes operating over the large range of length-scales involved. One solution is to combine analytical models for the small-scale star formation process with cosmological simulations that capture the large-scale physics such as structure formation, radiation backgrounds, and baryon-dark matter streaming motion that regulate the conditions of Pop III star formation. We build an analytical model to predict the final masses of Pop III stars/clusters from the properties of star-forming clouds, based on the key results of small-scale star formation simulations and stellar evolution models. Our model for the first time considers the interplay between feedback and fragmentation and covers different modes of Pop III star formation ranging from ordinary small ($\sim\!{10{-}2000}\ \rm M_\odot$) clusters in molecular-cooling clouds to massive ($\gtrsim\!{10^{4}}\ \rm M_\odot$) clusters containing supermassive ($\sim\!{10^{4}{-}3}\times 10^{5}\ \rm M_\odot$) stars under violent collapse of atomic-cooling clouds with large gas accretion rates of $\gtrsim\!{0.1}\ \rm M_\odot \ yr^{-1}$. As an example, the model is applied to the Pop III star-forming clouds in the progenitors of typical haloes hosting high-z luminous quasars ($M_{\rm h}\sim 10^{12}\ \rm M_\odot$ at $z\sim 6$), which shows that formation of Pop III massive clusters is common ($\sim\!{20{-}70}{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$) in such biased ($\sim\!{4}\sigma$) regions, and the resulting heavy black hole seeds from supermassive stars can account for a significant fraction of observed luminous ($\gtrsim\!{10^{46}}\ \rm erg\ s^{-1}$) quasars at $z\sim 6$.

Characterizing the assembly of dark matter haloes with protohalo size histories: I. Redshift evolution, relation to descendant haloes, and halo assembly bias

ABSTRACT We propose a novel method to quantify the assembly histories of dark matter haloes with the redshift evolution of the mass-weighted spatial variance of their progenitor haloes, that is, the protohalo size history. We find that the protohalo size history for each individual halo at z ∼ 0 can be described by a double power-law function. The amplitude of the fitting function strongly correlates to the central-to-total stellar mass ratios of descendant haloes. The variation of the amplitude of the protohalo size history can induce a strong halo assembly bias effect for massive haloes. This effect is detectable in observation using the central-to-total stellar mass ratio as a proxy of the protohalo size. The correlation to the descendant central-to-total stellar mass ratio and the halo assembly bias effect seen in the protohalo size are much stronger than that seen in the commonly adopted half-mass formation time derived from the mass accretion history. This indicates that the information loss caused by the compression of halo merger trees to mass accretion histories can be captured by the protohalo size history. Protohalo size thus provides a useful quantity to connect protoclusters across cosmic time and to link protoclusters with their descendant clusters in observations.

The progenitor galaxies of stellar haloes as ‘failed’ Milky Ways

ABSTRACT The stellar halo of the Milky Way records the history of its interactions with dwarf galaxies, whose subsequent destruction results in the formation of an extended stellar component. Recent works have suggested that galaxies with masses comparable to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC, $M_\star \sim 10^9$ M☉) may be the primary building blocks of the stellar halo of our Galaxy. We use cosmological simulations of the Lambda cold dark matter model to investigate LMC-mass galaxies at $z$ = 1–2 using a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation. We find that LMC analogues at $z$ = 2 evolve until the present day along three distinct pathways: (i) those that are destroyed in Milky Way-mass hosts; (ii) those that are themselves the main progenitors of Milky Way-mass galaxies; and (iii) those that survive until $z$ = 0, with stellar mass ∼1.0 dex lower than typical Milky Ways. We predict that the properties of these galaxies at $z$ = 2 (stellar metallicities, sizes, gas content, etc.) are largely indistinguishable, irrespective of which of these pathways is eventually taken; a survey targeting such galaxies in this redshift range would struggle to tell apart a ‘destroyed’ stellar halo progenitor from a ‘surviving’ LMC analogue. The only factor that determines the eventual fate of these galaxies is their proximity to a neighbouring Milky Way main progenitor at $z$ = 2: while the mean separation to a ‘surviving’ galaxy is around 7 Mpc, it is only 670 kpc to a ‘destroyed’ galaxy. This suggests that old stellar populations in the Milky Way may share intrinsic (i.e. non-dynamical) properties that are essentially indistinguishable from progenitors of its stellar halo.

Understanding the Early Stages of Galaxy Formation Using Very Metal-poor Stars from the Hamburg/ESO Survey

We explore the chemodynamical properties of a sample of very metal-poor (VMP) stars selected from the Hamburg/ESO survey, matched with Gaia EDR3, in the phase space identified by the three integrals of motion (L z , E, I 3). Disk and halo orbits are separated by using the criteria defined in Carollo & Chiba. We found 26 stars with [Fe/H] ≤ −2.5 possessing disk kinematics, of which 13 are extremely metal-poor. At these metallicities, the number of stars with disk kinematics is three times its retrograde counterpart. In the same range of metallicity we also identified 37 halo stars most tightly bound to the gravitational potential of the progenitor halo. The origins of these stars are investigated by comparing the observational results with simulated galaxies from the Aquarius Project and the IllustrisTNG simulations. We found two mechanisms of formation of VMP stars with disk kinematics: accretion from early satellites (which is dominant), and in situ formation. These stars are very old, with ages >12.5 Gyr (z > 5), and they are α-enriched. Accretion and in situ formation are also found for the retrograde counterparts, with accretion also being the dominant mode. Contributing accreted satellites have stellar masses in the range 106–109 M ☉ and are very gas-rich. The most bound halo stars are the oldest detected, with a median age of ∼13.3 Gyr (z ∼ 11), and are α-enriched. Our finding clearly shows that very old, VMP stars store important information on the first stages of assembly of our Galaxy and its halo.

First estimate of the local value of the baryonic streaming velocity

ABSTRACT Several studies have shown the influence of the relative streaming velocity (SV) between baryons and dark matter on the formation of structures. For the first time, we constrain the local value of the SV in which the Milky Way was formed. We use the semi-analytical model a-sloth to simulate the formation of Milky Way-like galaxies. The high resolution in mass and time of the dark matter merger trees from the Caterpillar simulation enables us to accurately model star formation in the smallest progenitor haloes at high redshift. The efficient semi-analytical nature of a-sloth allows us to run many simulations with various values of the local SV. Our investigation on the influence of the SV shows that it delays star formation at high redshift. However, at redshift z = 0, the SV has no effect on the total stellar mass in the Milky Way nor its Satellites. We find that extremely metal-poor and ultra metal-poor stars are affected by the SV and can hence be used to constrain its local value. The local optimal value of the SV is $v_\mathrm{SV} =1.75^{+0.13} _{-0.28}\, \sigma _\mathrm{SV}$, which is based on four independent observables. We further find that the SV decreases the number of luminous Milky Way satellites, but this decrease is not enough to solve the missing satellite problem.

Radiative feedback on supermassive star formation: the massive end of the Population III initial mass function

ABSTRACT Supermassive stars with masses of M* ≃ 104–105 M⊙ are invoked as possible seeds of high-redshift supermassive black holes, but it remains under debate whether their protostar indeed acquires sufficient mass via gas accretion overcoming radiative feedback. We investigate protostellar growth in dynamically heated atomic cooling haloes (ACHs) found in recent cosmological simulations, performing three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamical simulations that consider stellar evolution under variable mass accretion. We find that one of the ACHs feeds the central protostar at rates exceeding a critical value, above which the star evolves in a cool bloating phase and hardly produces ionizing photons. Consequently, the stellar mass reaches M* ≳ 104 M⊙ unimpeded by radiative feedback. In the other ACH, where the mass supply rate is lower, the star evolves almost as a hot main-sequence star, emitting intense ionizing radiation. Then, the stellar mass growth is terminated around 500 M⊙ by photoevaporation of the circumstellar disc. Our simulations provide a formula of the final stellar mass determined either by stellar feedback or their lifetime as a function of the mass supply rate from the parent cloud. Combining the results with the statistical properties of star-forming clouds in high-redshift quasar progenitor haloes, we construct a top-heavy mass distribution of primordial stars over M* ≃ 100–105 M⊙, approximately following a power-law spectrum of ${\propto} M_\ast ^{-1.3}$. Their black hole remnants would be further fed via the dense debris disc, powering ‘milliquasars’ with a bolometric luminosity of Lbol ≳ 1043 erg s−1.

Turbulent cold flows gave birth to the first quasars.

How quasars powered by supermassive black holes formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang is still one of the outstanding problems in astrophysics, 20 years after their discovery1-4. Cosmological simulations suggest that rare cold flows converging on primordial haloes in low-shear environments could have created these quasars if they were 104-105 solar masses at birth, but could not resolve their formation5-8. Semi-analytical studies of the progenitor halo of a primordial quasar found that it favours the formation of such seeds, but could not verify if one actually appeared9. Here we show that a halo at the rare convergence of strong, cold accretion flows creates massive black holes seeds without the need for ultraviolet backgrounds, supersonic streaming motions or even atomic cooling. Cold flows drive violent, supersonic turbulence in the halo, which prevents star formation until it reaches a mass that triggers sudden, catastrophic baryon collapse that forms 31,000 and 40,000 solar-mass stars. This simple, robust process ensures that haloes capable of forming quasars by a redshift of z > 6 produce massive seeds. The first quasars were thus a natural consequence of structure formation in cold dark matter cosmologies, and not exotic, finely tuned environments as previously thought10-14.

A deep learning approach to halo merger tree construction

ABSTRACT A key ingredient for semi-analytic models of galaxy formation is the mass assembly history of haloes, encoded in a tree structure. The most commonly used method to construct halo merger histories is based on the outcomes of high-resolution, computationally intensive N-body simulations. We show that machine learning (ML) techniques, in particular Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), are a promising new tool to tackle this problem with a modest computational cost and retaining the best features of merger trees from simulations. We train our GAN model with a limited sample of merger trees from the Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments (EAGLE) simulation suite, constructed using two halo finders–tree builder algorithms: SUBFIND – D-TREES and ROCKSTAR – ConsistentTrees. Our GAN model successfully learns to generate well-constructed merger tree structures with high temporal resolution, and to reproduce the statistical features of the sample of merger trees used for training, when considering up to three variables in the training process. These inputs, whose representations are also learned by our GAN model, are mass of the halo progenitors and the final descendant, progenitor type (main halo or satellite), and distance of a progenitor to that in the main branch. The inclusion of the latter two inputs greatly improves the final learned representation of the halo mass growth history, especially for SUBFIND-like ML trees. When comparing equally sized samples of ML merger trees with those of the EAGLE simulation, we find better agreement for SUBFIND-like ML trees. Finally, our GAN-based framework can be utilized to construct merger histories of low- and intermediate-mass haloes, the most abundant in cosmological simulations.

LYRA – II. Cosmological dwarf galaxy formation with inhomogeneous Population III enrichment

ABSTRACT We present the simulation of a $2\times 10^{9}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$ halo mass cosmological dwarf galaxy run to z = 0 at 4 solar mass gas resolution with resolved supernova feedback. We compare three simple subgrid implementations for the inhomogeneous chemical enrichment from Population III stars and compare them to constraints from Local Group dwarf galaxies. The employed model, LYRA, is a novel high-resolution galaxy formation model built for the moving mesh code arepo, which is marked by a resolved multiphase interstellar medium, single stars, and individual supernova events. The resulting reionization relic is characterized by a short (<1.5 Gyr) star formation history that is repeatedly brought to a standstill by violent bursts of feedback. Star formation is reignited for a short duration due to a merger at z ≈ 4 and then again at z ≈ 0.2−0 after sustained gas accretion. Our model z = 0 galaxy matches the stellar mass, size, stellar kinematics, and metallicity relations of Local Group dwarf galaxies well. The dark matter profile does not exhibit a core in any version of the model. We show that the host halo masses of Population III stars affect the assembly history of dwarf galaxies. This manifests itself through the initial gaseous collapse in the progenitor haloes, affecting the central density of the stellar component and through the accretion of luminous substructure.

Galactic tides and the Crater II dwarf spheroidal: a challenge to LCDM?

ABSTRACT The unusually low velocity dispersion and large size of Crater II pose a challenge to our understanding of dwarf galaxies in the Lambda cold dark matter (LCDM) cosmogony. The low velocity dispersion suggests either a dark halo mass much lower than the minimum expected from hydrogen cooling limit arguments or one that is in the late stages of extreme tidal stripping. The tidal interpretation has been favoured in recent work and is supported by the small pericentric distances consistent with available kinematic estimates. We use N-body simulations to examine this interpretation in detail, assuming a Navarro–Frenk–White (NFW) profile for Crater II’s progenitor halo. Our main finding is that, although the low velocity dispersion can indeed result from the effect of tides, the large size of Crater II is inconsistent with this hypothesis. This is because galaxies stripped to match the observed velocity dispersion are also reduced to sizes much smaller than the observed half-light radius of Crater II. Unless its size has been substantially overestimated, reconciling this system with LCDM requires that either (i) it is not bound and near equilibrium (unlikely, given its crossing time is shorter than the time elapsed since pericentre) or (ii) its progenitor halo deviates from the assumed NFW profile. The latter alternative may signal that baryons can affect the inner halo cusp even in extremely faint dwarfs or, more intriguingly, may signal effects associated with the intimate nature of the dark matter, such as finite self-interactions, or other such deviations from the canonical LCDM paradigm.

Constructing high-fidelity halo merger trees inabacussummit

ABSTRACTTracking the formation and evolution of dark matter haloes is a critical aspect of any analysis of cosmological N-body simulations. In particular, the mass assembly of a halo and its progenitors, encapsulated in the form of its merger tree, serves as a fundamental input for constructing semi-analytic models of galaxy formation and, more generally, for building mock catalogues that emulate galaxy surveys. We present an algorithm for constructing halo merger trees from abacussummit, the largest suite of cosmological N-body simulations performed to date consisting of nearly 60 trillion particles, and which has been designed to meet the Cosmological Simulation Requirements of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. Our method tracks the cores of haloes to determine associations between objects across multiple time slices, yielding lists of halo progenitors and descendants for the several tens of billions of haloes identified across the entire suite. We present an application of these merger trees as a means to enhance the fidelity of abacussummit halo catalogues by flagging and ‘merging’ haloes deemed to exhibit non-monotonic past merger histories. We show that this cleaning technique identifies portions of the halo population that have been deblended due to choices made by the halo finder, but which could have feasibly been part of larger aggregate systems. We demonstrate that by cleaning halo catalogues in this post-processing step, we remove potentially unphysical features in the default halo catalogues, leaving behind a more robust halo population that can be used to create highly accurate mock galaxy realizations from abacussummit.

A Wide and Deep Exploration of Radio Galaxies with Subaru HSC (WERGS). VI. Distant Filamentary Structures Pointed Out by High-z Radio Galaxies at z ∼ 4

Abstract We present the environmental properties around high-z radio galaxies (HzRGs) at z ∼ 4, which have been poorly investigated because of their rarity. We use the largest samples of HzRGs and g-dropout galaxy overdense regions at z ∼ 4, which were constructed from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program, to characterize the HzRG environments statistically. We measure the g-dropout galaxy overdensities around 21 HzRGs whose rest-frame 1.4 GHz radio luminosities (L 1.4 GHz) are 1026–27 W Hz−1. We find that the overdensities around the faint HzRGs with L 1.4 GHz ∼ 1026.0–26.5 W Hz−1 tend to be higher than those of the g-dropout galaxies. On the other hand, no significant difference of density environments is found between the luminous HzRGs with L 1.4 GHz ∼ 1026.5–27.0 W Hz−1 and the g-dropout galaxies. The HzRGs are found to occupy more massive halos than g-dropout galaxies through a cross-correlation between the HzRGs and g-dropout galaxies. This trend is more pronounced in the faint HzRGs. These results are consistent with a scenario where HzRGs get older and more massive as the radio luminosity decreases. The HzRGs are expected to trace the progenitors of Local Cluster halos from their calculated halo mass. In addition, we find that surrounding galaxies tend to distribute along the radio jet major axis of the HzRGs at angular distances of ≲500 physical kpc. Our findings imply the onset of the filamentary structures around the HzRGs at z ∼ 4.

Mass assembly history of dark matter haloes in the light of H0 tension

ABSTRACT The Hubble tension may introduce a new course of action to revise the standard Lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) model to unravel dark energy and dark matter physics. The Hubble parameter can be reconstructed by late-time observations of the background evolution model independently. We relate the reconstructed Hubble parameter to the structure formation and large-scale structure observables in this work. We use excursion set theory to calculate the number density of dark matter haloes and the mass function of progenitors. We obtain results for both the Markov and non-Markov extensions of excursion set theory in the context of spherical and ellipsoidal collapse. We show that the number density of dark matter haloes in the reconstructed model has ∼2σ difference in comparison with the Planck 2018 ΛCDM in the mass range M ≳ 1012 M⊙. We also compare the dark matter halo progenitor mass function with the pair-galaxy statistics and their mass assembly history from observational data of the Hubble Space Telescope Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey. Due to complications in distinguishing the ratio of accretion and merger in mass assembly, our result on the pair fraction is for illustration only. However, the ∼5 times more accurate observations will be promising for distinguishing the reconstructed model and the Planck 2018 ΛCDM.

Halo merger tree comparison: impact on galaxy formation models

ABSTRACT We examine the effect of using different halo finders and merger tree building algorithms on galaxy properties predicted using the galform semi-analytical model run on a high resolution, large volume dark matter simulation. The halo finders/tree builders hbt, rockstar, subfind, and VELOCI raptor differ in their definitions of halo mass, on whether only spatial or phase-space information is used, and in how they distinguish satellite and main haloes; all of these features have some impact on the model galaxies, even after the trees are post-processed and homogenized by galform. The stellar mass function is insensitive to the halo and merger tree finder adopted. However, we find that the number of central and satellite galaxies in galform does depend slightly on the halo finder/tree builder. The number of galaxies without resolved subhaloes depends strongly on the tree builder, with VELOCIraptor, a phase-space finder, showing the largest population of such galaxies. The distributions of stellar masses, cold and hot gas masses, and star formation rates agree well between different halo finders/tree builders. However, because VELOCIraptor has more early progenitor haloes, with these trees galform produces slightly higher star formation rate densities at high redshift, smaller galaxy sizes, and larger stellar masses for the spheroid component. Since in all cases these differences are small we conclude that, when all of the trees are processed so that the main progenitor mass increases monotonically, the predicted galform galaxy populations are stable and consistent for these four halo finders/tree builders.

Evolution of High-redshift Quasar Hosts and Promotion of Massive Black Hole Seed Formation

Abstract High-redshift luminous quasars powered by accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with mass ≳109 M ⊙ constrain their formation pathways. We investigate the formation of heavy seeds of SMBHs through gas collapse in the quasar host progenitors, using merger trees to trace the halo growth in highly biased, overdense regions of the universe. The progenitor halos are likely irradiated by intense H2-photodissociating radiation from nearby star-forming galaxies and heat the interior gas by successive mergers. The kinetic energy of the gas originating from mergers, as well as the baryonic streaming motion, prevents gas collapse and delays prior star formation. With a streaming velocity higher than the rms value, gas clouds in nearly all 104 realizations of merger trees enter the atomic-cooling stage and begin to collapse isothermally with T ≃ 8000 K via Lyα cooling. The fraction of trees that host isothermal gas collapse is 14% and increases with streaming velocity, while the rest form H2-cooled cores after short isothermal phases. If the collapsing gas is enriched to Z crit ∼ 2 × 10−3 Z ⊙, requiring efficient metal mixing, this fraction could be reduced by additional cooling via metal fine-structure lines. In the massive collapsing gas, the accretion rate onto a newly born protostar ranges between 3 × 10−3 M ⊙ yr−1 and 5 M ⊙ yr−1, among which a large fraction exceeds the critical rate suppressing stellar radiative feedback. As a result, we expect a distribution of stellar mass (presumably BH mass) ranging from several hundred to above 105 M ⊙, potentially forming massive BH binary mergers and yielding gravitational-wave events.

A Stochastic Theory of the Hierarchical Clustering. II. Halo Progenitor Mass Function and Large-scale Bias

Abstract We generalize the stochastic theory of hierarchical clustering presented in Paper I by Lapi & Danese to derive the (conditional) halo progenitor mass function and the related large-scale bias. Specifically, we present a stochastic differential equation that describes fluctuations in the mass growth of progenitor halos of given descendant mass and redshift, as driven by a multiplicative Gaussian white noise involving the power spectrum and the spherical collapse threshold of density perturbations. We demonstrate that, as cosmic time passes, the noise yields an average drift of the progenitors toward larger masses, which quantitatively renders the expectation from the standard extended Press and Schechter (EPS) theory. We solve the Fokker–Planck equation associated with the stochastic dynamics, and obtain as an exact, stationary solution, the EPS progenitor mass function. Then we introduce a modification of the stochastic equation in terms of a mass-dependent collapse threshold modulating the noise, and solve analytically the associated Fokker–Planck equation for the progenitor mass function. The latter is found to be in excellent agreement with the outcomes of N-body simulations; even more remarkably, this is achieved with the same shape of the collapse threshold used in Paper I to reproduce the halo mass function. Finally, we exploit the above results to compute the large-scale halo bias, and find it in pleasing agreement with the N-body outcomes. All in all, the present paper illustrates that the stochastic theory of hierarchical clustering introduced in Paper I can describe effectively not only halos’ abundance, but also their progenitor distribution and their correlation with the large-scale environment across cosmic times.

Forming massive seed black holes in high-redshift quasar host progenitors

ABSTRACT The presence of massive black holes (BHs) with masses of the order of $10^9\, {\rm M_\odot }$, powering bright quasars when the Universe was less than 1 Gyr old, poses strong constraints on their formation mechanism. Several scenarios have been proposed to date to explain massive BH formation, from the low-mass seed BH remnants of the first generation of stars to the massive seed BHs resulting from the rapid collapse of massive gas clouds. However, the plausibility of some of these scenarios to occur within the progenitors of high-z quasars has not yet been thoroughly explored. In this work, we investigate, by combining dark-matter only N-body simulations with a semi-analytic framework, whether the conditions for the formation of massive seed BHs from synchronized atomic-cooling halo pairs and/or dynamically heated (DH) mini-haloes are fulfilled in the overdense regions where the progenitors of a typical high-redshift quasar host form and evolve. Our analysis shows that the peculiar conditions in such regions, i.e. strong halo clustering and high star formation rates, are crucial to produce a non-negligible number of massive seed BH host candidates: we find ≈1400 DH metal-free mini-haloes, including one of these which evolves to a synchronized pair and ends up in the massive quasar-host halo by z = 6. This demonstrates that the progenitors of high-redshift quasar host haloes can harbour early massive seed BHs. Our results further suggest that multiple massive seed BHs may form in or near the quasar host’s progenitors, potentially merging at lower redshifts and yielding gravitational wave events.

A Random Walk Model for Dark Matter Halo Concentrations

Abstract For idealized (spherical, smooth) dark matter halos described by single-parameter density profiles (such as the Navarro–Frenk–White profile), there exists a one-to-one mapping between the energy of the halo and the scale radius of its density profile. The energy therefore uniquely determines the concentration parameter of such halos. We exploit this fact to predict the concentrations of dark matter halos via a random walk in halo energy space. Given a full merger tree for a halo, the total internal energy of each halo in that tree is determined by summing the internal and orbital energies of progenitor halos. We show that, when calibrated, this model can accurately reproduce the mean of the concentration–mass relation measured in N-body simulations and reproduces more of the scatter in that relation than previous models. We further test this model by examining both the autocorrelation of scale radii across time and the correlations between halo concentration and spin, and comparing them to results measured from cosmological N-body simulations. In both cases, we find that our model closely matches the N-body results. Our model is implemented within the open-source Galacticus toolkit.

MASS DISTRIBUTION OF DARK MATTER HALO AND SCALE EVOLUTION OF EARLY TYPE GALAXIES

In this paper we use two suites of ultra-high resolution N-body simulations Phoenix and Aquarius Projects to study the assembly history of sub-halos and its dependence on host halo mass. We found that more massive haloes have more progenitors, which is in contrast with former works because they counted dynamical progenitors repeatedly. Less massive halos have larger fraction of dynamical progenitors than more massive ones. The typical accretion time depends strongly on host halo mass. Progenitors of galactic halos are accreted at higher redshift than that of cluster halos. Once these progenitors orbit their primary systems, they rapidly lose their original mass but not their identifiers. Most of the progenitors are able to survive to present day. At given redshift, the survival fraction of accreted sub-halos is independent of host halo mass, while sub-halos in high mass halos lost more mass. In the second part, we use a semi-analytical galaxy formation model compiled on a Millennium Simulation to study the size evolution of massive early-type galaxies from redshift z = 2 to present days. We find that the model we used is able to well reproduce the amplitude and slope of size-mass relation, as well as its evolution. The amplitude of this relation reflects the typical compactness of dark matter halos at the time when most stars are formed. This link between size and star formation epoch is propagated in through galaxy combinations. Minor combinations are increasingly important with increasing present day stellar mass for galaxies more massive than 1011.4M⊙. At lower masses, major combinations are more important. In situ star formation contributes more to the size growth than it does to stellar mass growth. Similar to former works, we find that minor combinations dominate the subsequent growth both in stellar mass and in size for early formed early-type galaxies.

The impact of stellar and AGN feedback on halo-scale baryonic and dark matter accretion in the eagle simulations

ABSTRACT We use the eagle suite of hydrodynamical simulations to analyse accretion rates (and the breakdown of their constituent channels) on to haloes over cosmic time, comparing the behaviour of baryons and dark matter (DM). We also investigate the influence of sub-grid baryon physics on halo-scale inflow, specifically the consequences of modelling radiative cooling, as well as feedback from stars and active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We find that variations in halo baryon fractions at fixed mass (particularly their circumgalactic medium gas content) are very well correlated with variations in the baryon fraction of accreting matter, which we show to be heavily suppressed by stellar feedback in low-mass haloes, Mhalo ≲ 1011.5 M⊙. Breaking down accretion rates into first infall, recycled, transfer, and merger components, we show that baryons are much more likely to be smoothly accreted than to have originated from mergers when compared to DM, finding (averaged across halo mass) a merger contribution of $\approx 6{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ for baryons, and $\approx 15{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ for DM at z ≈ 0. We also show that the breakdown of inflow into different channels is strongly dependent on sub-grid physics, particularly the contribution of recycled accretion (accreting matter that has been previously ejected from progenitor haloes). Our findings highlight the dual role that baryonic feedback plays in regulating the evolution of galaxies and haloes: by (i) directly removing gas from haloes, and (ii) suppressing gas inflow to haloes.