Friday, November 8, 2019

Day 1636

Wednesday.  Thursday.  Friday.



1910.03605
Constraining the scatter in the galaxy-halo connection at Milky Way masses
Cao, Tinker, Mao, Wechsler

We develop and implement two new methods for constraining the scatter in the relationship between galaxies and dark matter halos. These new techniques are sensitive to the scatter at low halo masses, making them complementary to previous constraints that are dependent on clustering amplitudes or rich galaxy groups, both of which are only sensitive to more massive halos. In both of our methods, we use a galaxy group finder to locate central galaxies in the SDSS main galaxy sample. Our first technique uses the small-scale cross-correlation of central galaxies with all lower mass galaxies. This quantity is sensitive to the satellite fraction of low-mass galaxies, which is in turn driven by the scatter between halos and galaxies. The second technique uses the kurtosis of the distribution of line-of-sight velocities between central galaxies and neighboring galaxies. This quantity is sensitive to the distribution of halo masses that contain the central galaxies at fixed stellar mass. Theoretical models are constructed using peak halo circular velocity, $V_{\rm peak}$, as our property to connect galaxies to halos. The cross-correlation technique yields a constraint of $\sigma[ M_\ast|V_{\rm peak}]=0.27\pm 0.05$ dex, corresponding to a scatter in $\log M_\ast$ at fixed $M_h$ of $\sigma[ M_\ast|M_h]=0.38\pm 0.06$ dex at $M_h=10^{11.8}$ Msun. The kurtosis technique yields $\sigma[ M_\ast|V_{\rm peak}]=0.30\pm0.03$, corresponding to $\sigma[ M_\ast|M_h]=0.34\pm 0.04$ at $M_h=10^{12.2}$ Msun. The values of $\sigma[ M_\ast|M_h]$ are significantly larger than the constraints at higher masses, in agreement with the results of hydrodynamic simulations. This increase is only partly due to the scatter between $V_{\rm peak}$ and $M_h$, and it represents an increase of nearly a factor of two relative to the values inferred from clustering and group studies at high masses.


1910.04113
The AMS-02 beryllium and its implication for Cosmic Ray transport
Evoli, et al

The flux of unstable secondary Cosmic Ray nuclei, produced by spallation processes in the Interstellar Medium, can be used to constrain the residence time of Cosmic Rays inside the Galaxy. Among them, $^{10}$Be is especially useful because of its relatively long half-life of 1.39 Myr . In the framework of the diffusive halo model we describe Cosmic Ray transport taking into account all relevant interaction channels and accounting for the decay of unstable secondary nuclei. We then compare our results with the data collected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) on board the International Space Station for the flux ratios Be/C, B/C, C/O and Be/B as well as C and O absolute fluxes. These measurements, and especially the Be/B ratio, allow us to single out the flux of $^{10}$Be and infer a best fit propagation time of CRs in the Galaxy. Our results show that, if the cross sections for the production of secondary elements through spallation are taken at face value, AMS-02 measurements are compatible with the standard picture based on CR diffusion in a halo of size $H\sim 3-6$ kpc. Taking into account the uncertainties in the cross sections, this conclusion becomes less reliable, although still compatible with the standard picture. Implications of our findings for alternative models of CR transport are discussed.


1910.04168
A new census of the 0.2<z<3.0 Universe, Part I: the stellar mass function
Leja, et al

There has been a long-standing factor-of-two tension between the observed star formation rate density and the observed stellar mass buildup after $z\sim2$. Recently we have proposed that sophisticated panchromatic SED models can resolve this tension, as these methods infer systematically higher masses and lower star formation rates than standard approaches. In a series of papers we now extend this analysis and present a complete, self-consistent census of galaxy formation over $0.2 < z < 3$ inferred with the \texttt{Prospector} galaxy SED-fitting code. In this work, Paper I, we present the evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function using new mass measurements of $\sim$10$^5$ galaxies in the 3D-HST and COSMOS-2015 surveys. We employ a new methodology to infer the mass function from the observed stellar masses: instead of fitting independent mass functions in a series of fixed redshift intervals, we construct a continuity model that directly fits for the redshift evolution of the mass function. This approach ensures a smooth picture of galaxy assembly and makes use of the full, non-Gaussian uncertainty contours in our stellar mass inferences. The resulting mass function has higher number densities at a fixed stellar mass than almost any other measurement in the literature, largely owing to the older stellar ages inferred by \texttt{Prospector}. The stellar mass density is $\sim$50% higher than previous measurements, with the offset peaking at $z\sim1$. The next two papers in this series will present the new measurements of star-forming main sequence and the cosmic star formation rate density, respectively.


1910.04171
Weak lensing minima and peaks: cosmological constraints and the impact of baryons
Coulton, et al

We present a novel statistic to extract cosmological information in weak lensing data: the lensing minima. We also investigate the effect of baryons on the cosmological constraints from peak and minimum counts. Using the \texttt{MassiveNuS} simulations, we find that lensing minima are sensitive to non-Gaussian cosmological information and are complementary to the lensing power spectrum and peak counts. For an LSST-like survey, we obtain $95\%$ credible intervals from a combination of lensing minima and peaks that are significantly stronger than from the power spectrum alone, by $44\%$, $11\%$, and $63\%$ for the neutrino mass sum $\sum m_\nu$, matter density $\Omega_m$, and amplitude of fluctuation $A_s$, respectively. We explore the effect of baryonic processes on lensing minima and peaks using the hydrodynamical simulations \texttt{BAHAMAS} and \texttt{Osato15}. We find that ignoring baryonic effects would lead to strong ($\approx 4 \sigma$) biases in inferences from peak counts, but negligible ($\approx 0.5 \sigma$) for minimum counts, suggesting lensing minima are a potentially more robust tool against baryonic effects. Finally, we demonstrate that the biases can in principle be mitigated without significantly degrading cosmological constraints when we model and marginalize the baryonic effects.


1910.04179
The redshift evolution of rest-UV spectroscopic properties to z~5
Pahl, et al

We perform a comprehensive analysis of the redshift evolution of the rest-UV spectra of star-forming galaxies out to z~5. We combine new z~5 measurements of HI Ly$\alpha$ and low- and high-ionization interstellar metal absorption features with comparable measurements at z~2-4. This redshift range covers the peak epoch of star formation in the Universe and extends back towards the epoch of reionization. We measure the equivalent widths of interstellar absorption features using stacked spectra in bins of Ly$\alpha$ equivalent width, and perform corrections to the strength of Ly$\alpha$ based on a model for the transmission of the intergalactic medium. We find a strong trend of decreasing low-ionization line strength with increasing Ly$\alpha$ emission strength over the redshift range z~2-5, suggesting that both of these quantities are fundamentally linked to neutral gas covering fraction. At the highest Ly$\alpha$ equivalent widths, we see evolution with increasing redshift towards greater Ly$\alpha$ emission strength at fixed low-ionization absorption strength. This evolution suggests a higher intrinsic production rate of Ly$\alpha$ photons at z~5 than at lower redshift. Our conclusion is supported by the joint evolution of the relationships among Ly$\alpha$ emission strength, interstellar absorption strength, and dust reddening. We perform additional analysis in bins of stellar mass, star-formation rate, UV luminosity, and age, examining how the relationships between galaxy properties and Ly$\alpha$ emission evolve towards higher redshift. We conclude that increasing intrinsic Ly$\alpha$ photon production and strong detection of nebular CIV emission (signaling lower metallicity) at z~5 indicate an elevated ionized photon production efficiency ($\xi_{\rm ion}$).


1910.04310
The relationship between galaxy ISM and circumgalactic gas metallicities
Kacprzak, et al

We present ISM and CGM metallicities for 25 absorption systems associated with isolated star-forming galaxies (<z>=0.28) with 9.4<log(M*/Msun)<10.9 and with absorption detected within 200kpc. Galaxy ISM metallicities were measured using Ha/[NII] emission lines from Keck/ESI spectra. CGM single-phase low-ionization metallicities were modeled using MCMC and Cloudy analysis of absorption from HST/COS and Keck/HIRES or VLT/UVES quasar spectra. We find that the star-forming galaxy ISM metallicities follow the observed stellar mass metallicity relation (scatter 0.19dex). CGM metallicity shows no dependence with stellar mass and exhibits a scatter of ~2dex. All CGM metallicities are lower than the galaxy ISM metallicities and are offset by log(dZ)=-1.17+/-0.11. There is no obvious metallicity gradient as a function of impact parameter or virial radius (<2.3 sigma). There is no relationship between the relative CGM-galaxy metallicity and azimuthal angle. We find the mean metallicity differences along the major and minor axes are -1.13+/-0.18 and -1.23+/-0.11, respectively. Regardless of whether we examine our sample by low/high inclination or low/high impact parameter, or low/high N(HI), we do not find any significant relationship with relative CGM-galaxy metallicity and azimuthal angle. We find that 10/15 low column density systems (logN(HI)<17.2) reside along the galaxy major axis while high column density systems (logN(HI)>17.2) reside along the minor axis. This suggest N(HI) could be a useful indicator of accretion/outflows. We conclude that CGM is not well mixed, given the range of galaxy-CGM metallicities, and that metallicity at low redshift might not be a good tracer of CGM processes. Furthermore we should replace integrated line-of-sight, single phase, metallicities with multi-phase, cloud-cloud metallicities, which could be more indicative of the physical processes within the CGM.

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