arXiv subjects

Bitao Wang

Publications and source records attributed to Bitao Wang.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Massive Galaxy Halos Contain Less Inner Dark Matter Than Predicted

The mass profiles of galaxy halos encode how baryons reshape dark matter distribution, yet direct observational constraints across the full radial range remain scarce. Here we combine stellar kinematics from MaNGA, H I dynamical measurements from ALFALFA, and independently calibrated halo masses of SDSS groups to statistically reconstruct the mass distribution of central galaxies over nearly two orders of magnitude in radius. We demonstrate that H I data alone do not provide reliable total halo mass estimates, necessitating an independent group-based halo-mass scale. Compared to the IllustrisTNG and EAGLE simulations, the observational profiles of low-mass halos are broadly consistent; in contrast, massive observed halos exhibit systematically lower dynamical masses at the H I radius, lower inner dark-matter masses, and lower central dark-matter fractions (about 4$σ$ difference in units of population scatter) at fixed total halo mass. After subtracting baryonic contributions, the inferred dark-matter profiles remain broadly consistent with an NFW form, but with lower effective concentrations than predicted for massive halos. These results suggest that the inner dark-matter content of massive halos has been reduced more significantly than predicted by current hydrodynamical simulations, plausibly due to long-term baryonic halo heating in massive systems.

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arXiv2026

Reconstructing the Projected Dark Matter Field across 0.1-100 Mpc Scales from the SDSS Survey

Dark matter sets the gravitational environment in which galaxies form and evolve, but cannot be observed directly. We present a conditional diffusion model that reconstructs the projected dark matter density field from the galaxy stellar-mass density field for direct application to galaxy surveys. The model is trained on CAMELS and validated on the independent IllustrisTNG300-1 simulation. Halo masses inferred from the reconstructed projected-aperture measurements agree well with the corresponding true values, with a scatter below 0.2 dex. On 100 kpc scales, reconstructed surface densities show a typical scatter of ~0.3 dex in the regime most relevant for observations. We apply the model to SDSS galaxies with $M_\star\ge10^9\,M_\odot$ in a contiguous low-redshift region. Averaging over 100 stochastic realizations, we reconstruct and publicly release a projected dark matter field covering $90\times90\,(h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc})^2$ with a pixel size of $0.097\,h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}$. This pixel area corresponds to the characteristic projected area of halos with masses of ~$10^{10.6}\,h^{-1}\,M_\odot$. The map reveals the multiscale projected cosmic web, including cluster-scale overdensities, filaments and voids. Projected-aperture masses are statistically consistent with SDSS group-catalog masses, while the derived halo mass function broadly matches mock-catalog expectations. The reconstructed projected potential places Coma in one of the deepest wells and near a convergence region of the inferred projected acceleration field, suggesting that the reconstruction retains both local overdensities and coherent large-scale projected gravitational structure. This work shows that diffusion-based dark matter reconstruction can be applied to real galaxy surveys, enabling halo-mass- and spatially resolved dark-matter-environment-based studies of galaxy evolution in SDSS and future wide-area surveys.

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arXiv2026

No Detectable One-halo Galactic Conformity Signal with Halo-mass Estimates Consistent with Weak-lensing Constraints

One-halo galactic conformity is the tendency for satellites in halos with quenched centrals to have lower star-formation activity than those in halos with star-forming centrals at fixed halo mass. It is an important probe of the galaxy--halo connection and halo-wide quenching processes that may couple central and satellite evolution. However, its existence remains controversial, because conformity must be measured at fixed halo mass, while halo masses are difficult to estimate accurately. In this Letter, we measure one-halo conformity in SDSS using five stellar-mass-complete samples and three halo-mass estimates: an ML estimate whose star-forming and quenched stellar mass--halo mass relations (SHMRs) agree with independent weak-lensing constraints, and two conventional abundance-matching (AM) estimates. We quantify conformity as the difference in median $\log({\rm sSFR})$ between satellites of star-forming and quenched centrals, using both satellite-level and halo-level statistics. The two AM estimates produce strong positive conformity signals, consistent with previous AM-based measurements, but these signals are not reproduced with the ML halo masses. For the halo-level statistic, the representative AM-based signals are $+0.38\pm0.04$ dex and $+0.23\pm0.04$ dex for the luminosity-ranking and mass-ranking AM halo masses, detected relative to no conformity at about $10σ$ and $6σ$, respectively. In contrast, the ML result is consistent with no conformity, $+0.00\pm0.03$ dex; the satellite-level statistic gives a similar result. Thus, with halo-mass estimates consistent with weak-lensing constraints, we find no detectable one-halo conformity signal in the present SDSS sample, suggesting that the strong AM-based signal is largely driven by halo-mass estimation biases.

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arXiv2026

Prevalent elongated galaxies in the early Universe evidenced by stellar kinematics

The Universe is now extensively populated by discy galaxies with coherent galaxy-wise stellar rotation. This disc prevalence has been deemed a late-time phenomenon because the penetrating cold gaseous streams in the early Universe ($z\gtrsim 2$) fuel the star formation in galaxies too intensively to allow for thin disc formation. However, recent images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) unveiled a prominent population of low-mass galaxies at high redshifts with flattened shapes, widely interpreted as early significance of discs given the well-established connection between flattening and discy morphology seen in the local Universe. It is noticed, on the other hand, that these galaxies show far more flattened systems than can be accounted for by randomly oriented oblate discs, and the axial ratio distributions are better explained by elongated prolate ellipsoids, an extremely rare spindle-like configuration at low redshifts. The true morphological nature of these early low-mass galaxies is fundamental to understanding the structure evolution of their discy descendants we see today, including our Milky Way. In this work, we discriminate the oblate disc and prolate spindle scenario by a decisive experiment with stellar kinematics at its core. The result clearly supports the prolate spindle scenario, and evidences an early Universe widely inhabited by linear stellar systems contrasting the current era dominated by planar discy galaxies, which suggests a dimensional transition in galactic structure over cosmic time.

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arXiv2025

From Halos to Galaxies. X: Decoding Galaxy SEDs with Physical Priors and Accurate Star Formation History Reconstruction

The spectral energy distribution (SED) of galaxies is essential for deriving fundamental properties like stellar mass and star formation history (SFH). However, conventional methods, including both parametric and non-parametric approaches, often fail to accurately recover the observed cosmic star formation rate (SFR) density due to oversimplified or unrealistic assumptions about SFH and their inability to account for the complex SFH variations across different galaxy populations. To address this issue, we introduce a novel approach that improves galaxy broadband SED analysis by incorporating physical priors derived from hydrodynamical simulations. Tests using IllustrisTNG simulations demonstrate that our method can reliably determine galaxy physical properties from broadband photometry, including stellar mass within 0.05 dex, current SFR within 0.3 dex, and fractional stellar formation time within 0.2 dex, with a negligible fraction of catastrophic failures. When applied to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) main photometric galaxy sample with spectroscopic redshift, our estimates of stellar mass and SFR are consistent with the widely used MPA-JHU and GSWLC catalogs. Notably, using the derived SFHs of individual SDSS galaxies, we estimate the cosmic SFR density and stellar mass density with remarkable consistency to direct observations up to $z \sim 6$. This demonstrates a significant advancement in deriving SFHs from SEDs that closely align with observational data. Consequently, our method can reliably recover observed spectral indices such as $\rm D_{\rm n}(4000)$ and $\rm Hδ_{\rm A}$ by synthesizing the full spectra of galaxies using the estimated SFHs and metal enrichment histories, relying solely on broadband photometry as input. Furthermore, this method is extremely computationally efficient compared to conventional approaches.

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arXiv2025

From Halos to Galaxies. VI. Improved halo mass estimation for SDSS groups and measurement of the halo mass function

In $Λ$CDM cosmology, galaxies form and evolve in their host dark matter (DM) halos. Halo mass is crucial for understanding the halo-galaxy connection. The abundance matching (AM) technique has been widely used to derive the halo masses of galaxy groups. However, quenching of the central galaxy can decouple the coevolution of its stellar mass and DM halo mass. Different halo assembly histories can also result in significantly different final stellar mass of the central galaxies. These processes can introduce substantial uncertainties in the halo masses derived from the AM method, particularly leading to a systematic bias between groups with star-forming centrals (blue groups) and passive centrals (red groups). To improve, we developed a new machine learning (ML) algorithm that accounts for these effects and is trained on simulations. Our results show that the ML method eliminates the systematic bias in the derived halo masses for blue and red groups and is, on average, $\sim1/3$ more accurate than the AM method. With careful calibration of observable quantities from simulations and observations from SDSS, we apply our ML model to the SDSS Yang et al. groups to derive their halo masses down to $10^{11.5}\mathrm{M_\odot}$ or even lower. The derived SDSS group halo mass function agrees well with the theoretical predictions, and the derived stellar-to-halo mass relations for both red and blue groups matches well with those obtained from direct weak lensing measurements. These new halo mass estimates enable more accurate investigation of the galaxy-halo connection and the role of the halos in galaxy evolution.

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arXiv2024

On the kinematic nature of apparent discs at high redshifts: Local counterparts are not dominated by ordered rotation but by tangentially anisotropic random motion

It is not straightforward to physically interpret the apparent morphology of galaxies. Recent observations by James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) revealed a dominant galaxy population at high redshifts ($z>2$) that were visually classified as discs for their flattened shapes and/or exponential light profiles. The extensively accepted interpretation is that they are dynamically cold discs supported by bulk rotation. However, it is long known that flattened shapes and exponential profiles are not exclusive for rotating disc structure. To break degeneracy and assess the rotational support of typical high-$z$ galaxies in the JWST samples, those with active star formation and stellar masses $\mathrm{lg}(\mathcal{M}_{\star}/\mathcal{M}_{\odot})\sim9$, we study the kinematics of their equal-mass counterparts at $z=0$. While these local star-forming low-mass galaxies are photometrically similar to real dynamically cold discs, they are not supported by ordered rotation but primarily by random motion, and their flattened shapes result largely from tangential orbital anisotropy. Given the empirical and theoretical evidence that young galaxies are dynamically hotter at higher redshifts, our results suggest that the high-$z$ JWST galaxies may not be cold discs but are dynamically warm/hot galaxies with flattened shapes driven by anisotropy. While both having low rotational support, local low-mass galaxies possess oblate shapes, contrasting the prolate shapes (i.e. cigar-like) of low-mass systems at high redshifts. Such shape transition (prolate$\Rightarrow$oblate) indicates an associated change in orbital anisotropy (radial$\Rightarrow$tangential), with roots likely in the assembly of their host dark matter halos.

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arXiv2024

Universal bimodality in kinematic morphology and the divergent pathways to galaxy quenching

The hierarchical structure formation of our Universe inherently involves violent and chaotic episodes of mass assembly such as galaxy mergers. The level of bulk rotation of the collisionless stellar systems of galaxies reflects to what extent the galaxies, on the other hand, have assembled their stars during tranquil and ordered formation history, which fosters the growth of cohesively rotating structures. Observationally, galaxy populations show a wide spectrum of morphology and shapes, with different levels of rotational support. Despite the obvious variety and complexity, in this work we find that at a given stellar mass of galaxies, the distribution of the intrinsic spin parameter $λ_{R_{\rm e},\mathrm{intr}}$, i.e. the normalized specific angular momentum of stars, appears to be universally bimodal among galaxies in all star formation states and also in different environments. This ubiquitous bimodality in kinematic morphology evolves systematically with star formation and is particularly apparent for transitional galaxies of intermediate star formation rates, indicating that star formation quenching is proceeding separately within two distinct kinematic populations dominated by cold discs and hot spheroids. We show that the two populations also have contrasting recent star formation histories and metal enrichment histories, which reveal their divergent pathways to formation and quenching.

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arXiv2024

The kinematic bimodality: Efficient feedback and cold gas deficiency in slow-rotating galaxies

The bimodality in the stellar spin of low redshift (massive) galaxies, ubiquitously existing at all star formation levels and in diverse environment, suggests that galaxies grow and quench through two diverged evolutionary pathways. For spheroid-dominated galaxies of slow stellar rotation, the age composition and metallicity of their stellar populations evidence a fast quenching history with significant gas outflows. In this work, we measure the spin parameter $λ_{R_{\rm e}}$, i.e. the normalized specific angular momentum of stars, out of the MaNGA integral field spectroscopy for about 10000 galaxies. Among the two thirds with HI follow-up observations ($z\lesssim0.05$), we find that, compared to fast-rotating galaxies of the same stellar mass and star formation, the galaxy population of slower rotation are generally more HI gas-poor, robust against further environmental restriction and with non-detections taken into proper account using stacking technique. This cold gas deficit of slow-rotating galaxies is most apparent at high mass $\sim10^{11}\mathcal{M}_{\odot}$ below the star formation main sequence, supporting the pivotal role of gas outflows in their quenching history. With hints from HI velocity distributions, we suspect that massive gas outflows among the slow-rotating population are facilitated by high ejective feedback efficiency, which is a result of extensive coupling between disturbed volume-filling cold gas and (commonly) biconical feedback from central black holes. By contrast, in fast-rotating disc galaxies the feedback energy mostly goes to the hot circumgalactic medium rather than directly impacts the dense and planar cold gas, thus making the feedback mainly preventive against further gas inflow.

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arXiv2024

From Halos to Galaxies. IX. Estimate of Halo Assembly History for SDSS Galaxy Groups

The properties of the galaxies are tightly connected to their host halo mass and halo assembly history. Accurate measurement of the halo assembly history in observation is challenging but crucial to the understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. The stellar-to-halo mass ratio ($M_*/M_{\mathrm{h}}$) for the centrals has often been used to indicate the halo assembly time $t_{\mathrm{h,50}}$ of the group, where $t_{\mathrm{h,50}}$ is the lookback time at which a halo has assembled half of its present-day virial mass. Using mock data from the semi-analytic models, we find that $M_*/M_{\mathrm{h}}$ shows a significant scatter with $t_{\mathrm{h,50}}$, with a strong systematic difference between the group with a star-forming central (blue group) and passive central (red group). To improve the accuracy, we develop machine-learning models to estimate $t_{\mathrm{h,50}}$ for galaxy groups using only observable quantities in the mocks. Since star-formation quenching will decouple the co-growth of the dark matter and baryon, we train our models separately for blue and red groups. Our models have successfully recovered $t_{\mathrm{h,50}}$, within an accuracy of $\sim$ 1.09 Gyr. With careful calibrations of individual observable quantities in the mocks with SDSS observations, we apply the trained models to the SDSS Yang et al. groups and derive the $t_{\mathrm{h,50}}$ for each group for the first time. The derived SDSS $t_{\mathrm{h,50}}$ distributions are in good agreement with that in the mocks, in particular for blue groups. The derived halo assembly history, together with the halo mass, make an important step forward in studying the halo-galaxy connections in observation.

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arXiv2023

From Halos to Galaxies. VII. The Connections Between Stellar Mass Growth History, Quenching History and Halo Assembly History for Central Galaxies

The assembly of galaxies over cosmic time is tightly connected to the assembly of their host dark matter halos. We investigate the stellar mass growth history and the chemical enrichment history of central galaxies in SDSS-MaNGA. We find that the derived stellar metallicity of passive central galaxies is always higher than that of the star-forming ones. This stellar metallicity enhancement becomes progressively larger towards low-mass galaxies (at a given epoch) and earlier epochs (at a given stellar mass), which suggests strangulation as the primary mechanism for star formation quenching in central galaxies not only in the local universe, but also very likely at higher redshifts up to $z\sim3$. We show that at the same present-day stellar mass, passive central galaxies assembled half of their final stellar mass $\sim 2$ Gyr earlier than star-forming central galaxies, which agrees well with semi-analytic model. Exploring semi-analytic model, we find that this is because passive central galaxies reside in, on average, more massive halos with a higher halo mass increase rate across cosmic time. As a consequence, passive central galaxies are assembled faster and also quenched earlier than their star-forming counterparts. While at the same present-day halo mass, different halo assembly history also produces very different final stellar mass of the central galaxy within, and halos assembled earlier host more massive centrals with a higher quenched fraction, in particular around the "golden halo mass" at $10^{12}\mathrm{M_\odot}$. Our results call attention back to the dark matter halo as a key driver of galaxy evolution.

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arXiv2022

Cluster environment quenches the star formation of low-mass satellite galaxies from the inside-out

Environment plays a critical role in the star formation history of galaxies. Tidal and hydrodynamical stripping, prominent in cluster environment, can remove the peripheral gas of galaxies and star formation may thus be environmentally suppressed from the outside-in. We revisit the environmental dependence of the radial gradient of specific star formation rate (sSFR) profile. We probe the radial gradient by using the archival spectral indices D4000n and HdA measured from SDSS fiber spectra, to indicate central sSFR, and the total sSFR from fitting the spectral energy distribution. Despite the low spatial resolution, the wealth of SDSS data allows to disentangle the dependences on stellar mass, sSFR, and environment. We find that low-mass satellite galaxies in the mass range 9 < log M/M_solar < 9.8 on average quench in more inside-out pattern compared to isolated galaxies matched in mass, sSFR, and fiber coverage. This environmental effect is particularly strong for galaxies below the star formation main sequence, and peaks for those in the core of massive clusters where the phase-space diagram reveals clear links between the inside-out quenching and orbital properties. Our results suggest that both tidal and hydrodynamical interactions in cluster environment suppress the star formation of satellites mainly from the inside-out. As accreted gas of low angular momentum from hot gas halos is an important source for replenishing central gas reservoir, we discuss how gas stripping in clusters may lead to starvation and cause inside-out quenching when the outer star-forming discs are not significantly affected.

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arXiv2020

Physical Explanation for the Galaxy Distribution on the $(λ_{\rm R}, \varepsilon)$ and $(V/σ, \varepsilon)$ Diagrams or for the Limit on Orbital Anisotropy

In the $(λ_{\rm R}, \varepsilon)$ and $(V/σ, \varepsilon)$ diagrams for characterizing dynamical states, the fast-rotator galaxies (both early-type and spirals) are distributed within a well-defined leaf-shaped envelope. This was explained as due to an upper limit to the orbital anisotropy increasing with galaxy intrinsic flattening. However, a physical explanation for this empirical trend was missing. Here we construct Jeans Anisotropic Models (JAM), with either cylindrically or spherically aligned velocity ellipsoid (two extreme assumptions), and each with either spatially-constant or -variable anisotropy. We use JAM to build mock samples of axisymmetric galaxies, assuming on average an oblate shape for the velocity ellipsoid (as required to reproduce the rotation of real galaxies), and limiting the radial anisotropy $β$ to the range allowed by physical solutions. We find that all four mock samples naturally predict the observed galaxy distribution on the $(λ_{\rm R}, \varepsilon)$ and $(V/σ, \varepsilon)$ diagrams, without further assumptions. Given the similarity of the results from quite different models, we conclude that the empirical anisotropy upper limit in real galaxies, and the corresponding observed distributions in the $(λ_{\rm R}, \varepsilon)$ and $(V/σ, \varepsilon)$ diagrams, are due to the lack of physical axisymmetric equilibrium solutions at high $β$ anisotropy when the velocity ellipsoid is close to oblate.

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arXiv2020

SDSS-IV MaNGA: The kinematic-morphology of galaxies on the mass vs star-formation relation in different environments

We study the link between the kinematic-morphology of galaxies, as inferred from integral-field stellar kinematics, and their relation between mass and star formation rate (SFR). Our sample consists of $\sim 3200$ galaxies with integral-field spectroscopic data from the MaNGA survey with available determinations of their effective stellar angular momentum within the half-light radius $λ_{R_e}$. We find that for star-forming galaxies, namely along the star formation main sequence (SFMS), the $λ_{R_e}$ values remain large and almost unchanged over about two orders of magnitude in stellar mass, with the exception of the lowest masses $\mathcal{M}_{\star}\lesssim2\times10^{9} \mathcal{M}_{\odot}$, where $λ_{R_e}$ slightly decreases. The SFMS is dominated by spiral galaxies with small bulges. Below the SFMS, but above the characteristic stellar mass $\mathcal{M}_{\rm crit}\approx2\times10^{11} \mathcal{M}_{\odot}$, there is a sharp decrease in $λ_{R_e}$ with decreasing star formation rate: massive galaxies well below the SFMS are mainly slow-rotator early-type galaxies, namely genuinely spheroidal galaxies without disks. Below the SFMS and below $\mathcal{M}_{\rm crit}$ the decrease of $λ_{R_e}$ with decreasing SFR becomes modest or nearly absent: low-mass galaxies well below the SFMS, are fast-rotator early-type galaxies, and contain fast-rotating stellar disks like their star-forming counterparts. We also find a small but clear environmental dependence for the massive galaxies: in the mass range $10^{10.9}-10^{11.5} \mathcal{M}_{\odot}$, galaxies in rich groups or denser regions or classified as central galaxies have lower values of $λ_{R_e}$. While no environmental dependence is found for galaxies of lower mass. We discuss how our results can be understood as due to the different star formation and mass assembly histories of galaxies with varying mass.

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