arXiv subjects

Andrew Benson

Publications and source records attributed to Andrew Benson.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Report from the Tri-Agency Cosmological Simulation Task Force

The Tri-Agency Cosmological Simulations (TACS) Task Force was formed when Program Managers from the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) expressed an interest in receiving input into the cosmological simulations landscape related to the upcoming DOE/NSF Vera Rubin Observatory (Rubin), NASA/ESA's Euclid, and NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). The Co-Chairs of TACS, Katrin Heitmann and Alina Kiessling, invited community scientists from the USA and Europe who are each subject matter experts and are also members of one or more of the surveys to contribute. The following report represents the input from TACS that was delivered to the Agencies in December 2018.

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arXiv2020

SatGen: a semi-analytical satellite galaxy generator -- I. The model and its application to Local-Group satellite statistics

We present a semi-analytic model of satellite galaxies, SatGen, which can generate large samples of satellite populations for a host halo of desired mass, redshift, and assembly history. The model combines dark-matter halo merger trees, empirical relations for the galaxy-halo connection, and analytic prescriptions for tidal effects, dynamical friction, and ram pressure stripping. SatGen emulates cosmological zoom-in hydro-simulations in certain aspects. Satellites can reside in cored or cuspy DM subhaloes, depending on the halo response to baryonic physics that can be formulated from hydro-simulations and physical modeling. The subhalo profile and the stellar mass and size of a satellite evolves depending on its tidal mass loss and initial structure. The host galaxy can include a baryonic disc and a stellar bulge, each described by a density profile that allows analytic orbit integration. SatGen complements simulations by propagating the effect of halo response found in simulated field galaxies to satellites (not properly resolved in simulations) and outperforms simulations by sampling the halo-to-halo variance of satellite statistics and overcoming artificial disruption due to insufficient resolution. As a first application, we use the model to study satellites of Milky Way sized hosts, making it emulate simulations of bursty star formation and of smooth star formation, respectively, and to experiment with a disc potential in the host halo. Our model reproduces the observed satellite statistics reasonably well. Different physical recipes make a difference in satellite abundance and spatial distribution at the 25% level, not large enough to be distinguished by current observations given the halo-to-halo variance. The MW disc depletes satellites by 20% and has a subtle effect of diversifying the internal structure of satellites, important for alleviating certain small-scale problems.

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arXiv2019

Astro2020 APC White Paper: Theoretical Astrophysics 2020-2030

The past two decades have seen a tremendous investment in observational facilities that promise to reveal new and unprecedented discoveries about the universe. In comparison, the investment in theoretical work is completely dwarfed, even though theory plays a crucial role in the interpretation of these observations, predicting new types of phenomena, and informing observing strategies. In this white paper, we argue that in order to reach the promised critical breakthroughs in astrophysics over the next decade and well beyond, the national agencies must take a serious approach to investment in theoretical astrophysics research. We discuss the role of theory in shaping our understanding of the universe, and then we provide a multi-level strategy, from the grassroots to the national, to address the current underinvestment in theory relative to observational work.

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arXiv2019

Warm dark matter chills out: constraints on the halo mass function and the free-streaming length of dark matter with 8 quadruple-image strong gravitational lenses

The free-streaming length of dark matter depends on fundamental dark matter physics, and determines the abundance and concentration of dark matter halos on sub-galactic scales. Using the image positions and flux ratios from eight quadruply-imaged quasars, we constrain the free-streaming length of dark matter and the amplitude of the subhalo mass function (SHMF). We model both main deflector subhalos and halos along the line of sight, and account for warm dark matter (WDM) free-streaming effects on the mass function and mass-concentration relation. By calibrating the scaling of the SHMF with host halo mass and redshift using a suite of simulated halos, we infer a global normalization for the SHMF. We account for finite-size background sources, and marginalize over the mass profile of the main deflector. Parameterizing dark matter free-streaming through the half-mode mass $m_{\rm{hm}}$, we constrain the thermal relic particle mass $m_{\rm{DM}}$ corresponding to $m_{\rm{hm}}$. At $95 \%$ CI: $m_{\rm{hm}} < 10^{7.8} M_{\odot}$ ($m_{\rm{DM}} > 5.2 \ \rm{keV}$). We disfavor $m_{\rm{DM}} = 4.0 \rm{keV}$ and $ m_{\rm{DM}} = 3.0 \rm{keV}$ with likelihood ratios of 7:1 and 30:1, respectively, relative to the peak of the posterior distribution. Assuming cold dark matter, we constrain the projected mass in substructure between $10^6 - 10^{9} M_{\odot}$ near lensed images. At $68 \%$ CI, we infer $2.0 - 6.1 \times 10^{7} M_{\odot} \rm{kpc^{-2}}$, corresponding to mean projected mass fraction $\bar{f}_{\rm{sub}} = 0.035_{-0.017}^{+0.021}$. At $95 \%$ CI, we obtain a lower bound on the projected mass of $0.6 \times 10^{7} M_{\odot} \rm{kpc^{-2}}$, corresponding to $\bar{f}_{\rm{sub}} > 0.005$. These results agree with the predictions of cold dark matter.

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arXiv2019

Prediction of H$α$ and [OIII] Emission Line Galaxy Number Counts for Future Galaxy Redshift Surveys

We perform a simulation with Galacticus, a semi-analytical galaxy formation model, to predict the number counts of H$α$ and [OIII] emitting galaxies. With a state-of-the-art N-body simulation, UNIT, we first calibrate Galacticus with the current observation of H$α$ luminosity function. The resulting model coupled with a dust attenuation model, can reproduce the current observations, including the H$α$ luminosity function from HiZELS and number density from WISP. We extrapolate the model prediction to higher redshift and the result is found to be consistent with previous investigations. We then use the same galaxy formation model to predict the number counts for [OIII] emitting galaxies. The result provides further validation of our galaxy formation model and dust model. We present number counts of H$α$ and [OIII] emission line galaxies for three different line flux limits: $5\times10^{-17}$erg/s/cm$^{2}$, $1\times10^{-16}$erg/s/cm$^{2}$ (6.5$σ$ nominal depth for WFIRST GRS), and $2\times10^{-16}$erg/s/cm$^{2}$ (3.5$σ$ depth of Euclid GRS). At redshift $2<z<3$, our model predicts that WFIRST can observe hundreds of [OIII] emission line galaxies per square degree with a line flux limit of $1\times10^{-16}$erg/s/cm$^{2}$. This will provide accurate measurement of large scale structure to probe dark energy over a huge cosmic volume to an unprecedented high redshift. Finally, we compare the flux ratio of H$α$/[OIII] within the redshift range of $0<z<3$. Our results show the known trend of increasing H$α$/[O III] flux ratio with H$α$ flux at low redshift, which becomes a weaker trend at higher redshifts.

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arXiv2019

Generating Synthetic Cosmological Data with GalSampler

As part of the effort to meet the needs of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST DESC) for accurate, realistically complex mock galaxy catalogs, we have developed GalSampler, an open-source python package that assists in generating large volumes of synthetic cosmological data. The key idea behind GalSampler is to recast hydrodynamical simulations and semi-analytic models as physically-motivated galaxy libraries. GalSampler populates a new, larger-volume halo catalog with galaxies drawn from the baseline library; by using weighted sampling guided by empirical modeling techniques, GalSampler inherits statistical accuracy from the empirical model and physically-motivated complexity from the baseline library. We have recently used GalSampler to produce the cosmoDC2 extragalactic catalog made for the LSST DESC Data Challenge 2. Using cosmoDC2 as a guiding example, we outline how GalSampler can continue to support ongoing and near-future galaxy surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES), the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), WFIRST, and Euclid.

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arXiv2019

Constraints on the mass-concentration relation of cold dark matter halos with 11 strong gravitational lenses

The mass-concentration relation of dark matter halos reflects the assembly history of objects in hierarchical structure formation scenarios, and depends on fundamental quantities in cosmology such as the slope of the primordial matter power-spectrum. This relation is unconstrained by observations on sub-galactic scales. We derive the first measurement of the mass-concentration relation using the image positions and flux ratios from eleven quadruple-image strong gravitational lenses (quads) in the mass range $10^{6} - 10^{10} M_{\odot}$, assuming cold dark matter. Our analysis framework includes both subhalos and line of sight halos, marginalizes over nuisance parameters describing the lens macromodel, accounts for finite source effects on lensing observables, and simultaneously constrains the normalization and logarithmic slope of the mass-concentration relation, and the normalization of the subhalo mass function. At $z=0$, we constrain the concentration of $10^{8} M_{\odot}$ halos $c=12_{-5}^{+6}$ at $68 \%$ CI, and $c=12_{-9}^{+15}$ at $95 \%$ CI. For a $10^{7} M_{\odot}$ halo, we obtain $68 \%$ ($95 \%$) constraints $c=15_{-8}^{+9}$ ($c=15_{-11}^{+18}$), while for $10^{9} M_{\odot}$ halos $c=10_{-4}^{+7}$ ($c=10_{-7}^{+14}$). These results are consistent with the theoretical predictions from mass-concentration relations in the literature, and establish strong lensing by galaxies as a powerful probe of halo concentrations on sub-galactic scales across cosmological distance.

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arXiv2019

Probing dark matter structure down to $10^7$ solar masses: flux ratio statistics in gravitational lenses with line of sight halos

Strong lensing provides a powerful means of investigating the nature of dark matter as it probes dark matter structure on sub-galactic scales. We present an extension of a forward modeling framework that uses flux ratios from quadruply imaged quasars (quads) to measure the shape and amplitude of the halo mass function, including line of sight (LOS) halos and main deflector subhalos. We apply this machinery to 50 mock lenses --- roughly the number of known quads --- with warm dark matter (WDM) mass functions exhibiting free-streaming cutoffs parameterized by the half-mode mass $m_{\rm{hm}}$. Assuming cold dark matter (CDM), we forecast bounds on $m_{\rm{hm}}$ and the corresponding thermal relic particle masses over a range of tidal destruction severity, assuming a particular WDM mass function and mass-concentration relation. With significant tidal destruction, at $2 σ$ we constrain $m_{\rm{hm}}<10^{7.9} \left(10^{8.4}\right) M_{\odot}$, or a 4.4 (3.1) keV thermal relic, with image flux uncertainties from measurements and lens modeling of $2\% \left(6\%\right)$. With less severe tidal destruction we constrain $m_{\rm{hm}}<10^{7} \left(10^{7.4}\right) M_{\odot}$, or an 8.2 (6.2) keV thermal relic. If dark matter is warm, with $m_{\rm{hm}} = 10^{7.7} M_{\odot}$ (5.1 keV), we would favor WDM with $m_{\rm{hm}} > 10^{7.7} M_{\odot}$ over CDM with relative likelihoods of 22:1 and 8:1 with flux uncertainties of $2\%$ and $6\%$, respectively. These bounds improve over those obtained by modeling only main deflector subhalos because LOS objects produce additional flux perturbations, especially for high redshift systems. These results indicate that $\sim 50$ quads can conclusively differentiate between warm and cold dark matter.

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arXiv2019

Galaxy formation in the Planck Millennium: the atomic hydrogen content of dark matter halos

We present recalibrations of the GALFORM semi-analytical model of galaxy formation in a new N-body simulation with the Planck cosmology. The Planck Millennium simulation uses more than 128 billion particles to resolve the matter distribution in a cube of $800$ Mpc on a side, which contains more than 77 million dark matter haloes with mass greater than $2.12 \times 10^{9} h^{-1} {\rm M_{\odot}}$ at the present day. Only minor changes to a very small number of model parameters are required in the recalibration. We present predictions for the atomic hydrogen content (HI) of dark matter halos, which is a key input into the calculation of the HI intensity mapping signal expected from the large-scale structure of the Universe. We find that the HI mass $-$ halo mass relation displays a clear break at the halo mass above which AGN heating suppresses gas cooling, $\approx 3 \times 10^{11} h^{-1} M_{\rm \odot}$. Below this halo mass, the HI content of haloes is dominated by the central galaxy; above this mass it is the combined HI content of satellites that prevails. We find that the HI mass - halo mass relation changes little with redshift up to $z=3$. The bias of HI sources shows a scale dependence that gets more pronounced with increasing redshift.

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arXiv2019

Linear bias forecasts for emission line cosmological surveys

We forecast the linear bias for H${\rm α}$-emitting galaxies at high redshift. To simulate a Euclid-like and a WFIRST-like survey, we place galaxies into a large-volume dark matter halo lightcone by sampling a library of luminosity-dependent halo occupation distributions (HODs), which is constructed using a physically motivated galaxy formation model. We calibrate the dust attenuation in the lightcones such that they are able to reproduce the Hα luminosity function or the Hα cumulative number counts. The angle-averaged galaxy correlation function is computed for each survey in redshift slices of width $Δz = 0.2$. In each redshift bin the linear bias can be fitted with a single, scale-independent value that increases with increasing redshift. Fitting for the evolution of linear bias with redshift, we find that our Euclid-like and WFIRST-like surveys are both consistent within error with the relation $b(z) = 0.7z + 0.7$. Our bias forecasts are consistent with bias measurements from the HiZELS survey. We find that the Euclid-like and WFIRST-like surveys yield linear biases that are broadly consistent within error, most likely due to the HOD for the WFIRST-like survey having a steeper power-law slope towards larger halo masses.

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arXiv2019

A Characteristic Mass Scale in the Mass-Metallicity Relation of Galaxies

We study the shape of the gas-phase mass-metallicity relation (MZR) of a combined sample of present-day dwarf and high-mass star-forming galaxies using IZI, a Bayesian formalism for measuring chemical abundances presented in Blanc et al. 2015. We observe a characteristic stellar mass scale at $M_* \simeq 10^{9.5}$M$_{\odot}$, above which the ISM undergoes a sharp increase in its level of chemical enrichment. In the $10^{6}-10^{9.5}$M$_{\odot}$ range the MZR follows a shallow power-law ($Z\propto M^α_*$) with slope $α=0.14\pm0.08$. At approaching $M_* \simeq 10^{9.5}$M$_{\odot}$ the MZR steepens significantly, showing a slope of $α=0.37\pm0.08$ in the $10^{9.5}-10^{10.5}$M$_{\odot}$ range, and a flattening towards a constant metallicity at higher stellar masses. This behavior is qualitatively different from results in the literature that show a single power-law MZR towards the low mass end. We thoroughly explore systematic uncertainties in our measurement, and show that the shape of the MZR is not induced by sample selection, aperture effects, a changing N/O abundance, the adopted methodology used to construct the MZR, secondary dependencies on star formation activity, nor diffuse ionized gas (DIG) contamination, but rather on differences in the method used to measure abundances. High resolution hydrodynamical simulations can qualitatively reproduce our result, and suggest a transition in the ability of galaxies to retain their metals for stellar masses above this threshold. The MZR characteristic mass scale also coincides with a transition in the scale height and clumpiness of cold gas disks, and a typical gas fraction below which the efficiency of star formation feedback for driving outflows is expected to decrease sharply.

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arXiv2018

The Three Hundred project: a large catalogue of theoretically modelled galaxy clusters for cosmological and astrophysical applications

We introduce the THE THREE HUNDRED project, an endeavour to model 324 large galaxy clusters with full-physics hydrodynamical re-simulations. Here we present the data set and study the differences to observations for fundamental galaxy cluster properties and scaling relations. We find that the modelled galaxy clusters are generally in reasonable agreement with observations with respect to baryonic fractions and gas scaling relations at redshift z = 0. However, there are still some (model-dependent) differences, such as central galaxies being too massive, and galaxy colours (g - r) being bluer (about 0.2 dex lower at the peak position) than in observations. The agreement in gas scaling relations down to 10^{13} h^{-1} M_{\odot} between the simulations indicates that particulars of the sub-grid modelling of the baryonic physics only has a weak influence on these relations. We also include - where appropriate - a comparison to three semi-analytical galaxy formation models as applied to the same underlying dark-matter-only simulation. All simulations and derived data products are publicly available.

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arXiv2018

Cosmic CARNage II: the evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function in observations and galaxy formation models

We present a comparison of the observed evolving galaxy stellar mass functions with the predictions of eight semi-analytic models and one halo occupation distribution model. While most models are able to fit the data at low redshift, some of them struggle to simultaneously fit observations at high redshift. We separate the galaxies into 'passive' and 'star-forming' classes and find that several of the models produce too many low-mass star-forming galaxies at high redshift compared to observations, in some cases by nearly a factor of 10 in the redshift range $2.5 < z < 3.0$. We also find important differences in the implied mass of the dark matter haloes the galaxies inhabit, by comparing with halo masses inferred from observations. Galaxies at high redshift in the models are in lower mass haloes than suggested by observations, and the star formation efficiency in low-mass haloes is higher than observed. We conclude that many of the models require a physical prescription that acts to dissociate the growth of low-mass galaxies from the growth of their dark matter haloes at high redshift.

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arXiv2018

WFIRST Science Investigation Team "Cosmology with the High Latitude Survey" Annual Report 2017

Cosmic acceleration is the most surprising cosmological discovery in many decades. Testing and distinguishing among possible explanations requires cosmological measurements of extremely high precision probing the full history of cosmic expansion and structure growth and, ideally, compare and contrast matter and relativistic tracers of the gravity potential. This program is one of the defining objectives of the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), as set forth in the New Worlds, New Horizons report (NWNH) in 2010. The WFIRST mission has the ability to improve these measurements by 1-2 orders of magnitude compared to the current state of the art, while simultaneously extending their redshift grasp, greatly improving control of systematic effects, and taking a unified approach to multiple probes that provide complementary physical information and cross-checks of cosmological results. We describe in this annual report the activities of the Science Investigation Team (SIT) "Cosmology with the High Latitude Survey (HLS)" during the year 2017. This team was selected by NASA in December 2015 in order to address the stringent challenges of the WFIRST dark energy (DE) program through the Project's formulation phase. This SIT has elected to jointly address Galaxy Redshift Survey, Weak Lensing and Cluster Growth and thus fully embrace the fact that the imaging and spectroscopic elements of the HLS will be realized as an integrated observing program, and they jointly impose requirements on performance and operations. WFIRST is designed to be able to deliver a definitive result on the origin of cosmic acceleration. It is not optimized for Figure of Merit sensitivity but for control of systematic uncertainties and for having multiple techniques each with multiple cross-checks. Our SIT work focuses on understanding the potential systematics in the WFIRST DE measurements.

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arXiv2017

Predicting Hα emission line galaxy counts for future galaxy redshift surveys

Knowledge of the number density of H$α$ emitting galaxies is vital for assessing the scientific impact of the Euclid and WFIRST missions. In this work we present predictions from a galaxy formation model, Galacticus, for the cumulative number counts of H$α$-emitting galaxies. We couple Galacticus to three different dust attenuation methods and examine the counts using each method. A $χ^2$ minimisation approach is used to compare the model predictions to observed galaxy counts and calibrate the dust parameters. We find that weak dust attenuation is required for the Galacticus counts to be broadly consistent with the observations, though the optimum dust parameters return large values for $χ^2$, suggesting that further calibration of Galacticus is necessary. The model predictions are also consistent with observed estimates for the optical depth and the H$α$ luminosity function. Finally we present forecasts for the redshift distributions and number counts for two Euclid-like and one WFIRST-like survey. For a Euclid-like survey with redshift range $0.9\leqslant z\leqslant 1.8$ and H$α+{\rm [NII]}$ blended flux limit of $2\times 10^{-16}{\rm erg}\,{\rm s}^{-1}\,{\rm cm}^{-2}$ we predict a number density between 3900--4800 galaxies per square degree. For a WFIRST-like survey with redshift range $1\leqslant z\leqslant 2$ and blended flux limit of $1\times 10^{-16}{\rm erg}\,{\rm s}^{-1}\,{\rm cm}^{-2}$ we predict a number density between 10400--15200 galaxies per square degree.

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arXiv2017

Cosmic CARNage I: on the calibration of galaxy formation models

We present a comparison of nine galaxy formation models, eight semi-analytical and one halo occupation distribution model, run on the same underlying cold dark matter simulation (cosmological box of co-moving width 125$h^{-1}$ Mpc, with a dark-matter particle mass of $1.24\times 10^9 h^{-1}$ Msun) and the same merger trees. While their free parameters have been calibrated to the same observational data sets using two approaches, they nevertheless retain some 'memory' of any previous calibration that served as the starting point (especially for the manually-tuned models). For the first calibration, models reproduce the observed z = 0 galaxy stellar mass function (SMF) within 3-σ. The second calibration extended the observational data to include the z = 2 SMF alongside the z~0 star formation rate function, cold gas mass and the black hole-bulge mass relation. Encapsulating the observed evolution of the SMF from z = 2 to z = 0 is found to be very hard within the context of the physics currently included in the models. We finally use our calibrated models to study the evolution of the stellar-to-halo mass (SHM) ratio. For all models we find that the peak value of the SHM relation decreases with redshift. However, the trends seen for the evolution of the peak position as well as the mean scatter in the SHM relation are rather weak and strongly model dependent. Both the calibration data sets and model results are publicly available.

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arXiv2017

MultiDark-Galaxies: data release and first results

We present the public release of the MultiDark-Galaxies: three distinct galaxy catalogues derived from one of the Planck cosmology MultiDark simulations (i.e. MDPL2, with a volume of (1 Gpc/$h$)$^{3}$ and mass resolution of $1.5 \times 10^{9} M_{\odot}/h$) by applying the semi-analytic models GALACTICUS, SAG, and SAGE to it. We compare the three models and their conformity with observational data for a selection of fundamental properties of galaxies like stellar mass function, star formation rate, cold gas fractions, and metallicities - noting that they sometimes perform differently reflecting model designs and calibrations. We have further selected galaxy subsamples of the catalogues by number densities in stellar mass, cold gas mass, and star formation rate in order to study the clustering statistics of galaxies. We show that despite different treatment of orphan galaxies, i.e. galaxies that lost their dark-matter host halo due to the finite mass resolution of the N-body simulation or tidal stripping, the clustering signal is comparable, and reproduces the observations in all three models - in particular when selecting samples based upon stellar mass. Our catalogues provide a powerful tool to study galaxy formation within a volume comparable to those probed by on-going and future photometric and redshift surveys. All model data consisting of a range of galaxy properties - including broad-band SDSS magnitudes - are publicly available.

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arXiv2017

The importance of preventive feedback: inference from observations of the stellar masses and metallicities of Milky Way dwarf galaxies

Dwarf galaxies are known to have remarkably low star formation efficiency due to strong feedback. Adopting the dwarf galaxies of the Milky Way as a laboratory, we explore a flexible semi-analytic galaxy formation model to understand how the feedback processes shape the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. Using Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo, we exhaustively search a large parameter space of the model and rigorously show that the general wisdom of strong outflows as the primary feedback mechanism cannot simultaneously explain the stellar mass function and the mass--metallicity relation of the Milky Way satellites. An extended model that assumes that a fraction of baryons is prevented from collapsing into low-mass halos in the first place can be accurately constrained to simultaneously reproduce those observations. The inference suggests that two different physical mechanisms are needed to explain the two different data sets. In particular, moderate outflows with weak halo mass dependence are needed to explain the mass--metallicity relation, and prevention of baryons falling into shallow gravitational potentials of low-mass halos (e.g. "pre-heating") is needed to explain the low stellar mass fraction for a given subhalo mass.

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