arXiv subjects

Donghai Zhao

Publications and source records attributed to Donghai Zhao.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Where Do Quasars Live? DESI DR1 Constraints from PAC Measurements

Quasar environments connect the growth of supermassive black holes, active galactic nucleus feedback, and galaxy evolution. Small-scale quasar clustering probes the one-halo regime and can test whether quasar activity depends on central--satellite status. We seek to obtain precise small-scale measurements of quasar environments at $0.8<z<1.0$ and use them to constrain the quasar--halo connection, particularly the relative probability for satellite subhalos and central halos of the same halo accretion mass to host a quasar. We apply the Photometric Objects Around Cosmic Webs (PAC) method to DESI Data Release~1 quasars and photometric galaxies from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys DR9, measuring the excess projected surface density of neighbouring galaxies around quasars, $\bar{n}_{2}w_{\rm p}$, down to a stellar mass of $M_{\ast}=10^{10.80}M_{\odot}$ over $0.1<r_{\rm p}/(h^{-1}\,\mathrm{Mpc})<15$. we jointly model the excess surface-density measurements, the quasar and luminous red galaxy (LRG) autocorrelation functions, and the quasar--LRG cross-correlation. We interpret these measurements using an N-body simulation together with a stellar-to-halo mass relation, an explicit stellar-mass-incompleteness model, and a Gaussian quasar occupation as a function of halo accretion mass. The Gaussian quasar occupation peaks at $\log_{10}(M_{\rm acc}/h^{-1}M_{\odot})=12.88^{+0.02}_{-0.02}$ with width $\sigma_{\rm q}=0.51^{+0.02}_{-0.01}$, and the relative satellite-hosting parameter, $B$, defined as the quasar-hosting probability of a satellite subhalo relative to that of a central halo at fixed halo accretion mass, is $B=1.01^{+0.03}_{-0.03}$. Within the adopted model framework, quasars are consistent with being equally likely to reside in central halos and satellite subhalos at fixed halo accretion mass. PAC has strong potential to deliver precise small-scale measurements of quasar environments.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2026

Designing the Haystack: Programmable Chemical Space for Generative Molecular Discovery

Chemical space exploration underlies drug discovery, yet most generative models treat chemical space as a fixed, implicitly learned distribution, focusing on sampling molecules rather than deliberately designing the space itself. We introduce SpaceGFN, a generative framework that elevates chemical space to a programmable computational object: a controllable degree of freedom enabling explicit construction and adaptive traversal of structured molecular universes. SpaceGFN decouples space definition from exploration. Users specify building blocks and reaction rules to construct chemically and synthetically coherent spaces, while a GFlowNet performs efficient, property-biased sampling within them. In Discovery mode, we demonstrate programmable space design through two strategies. A pseudo-natural product space assembles natural product-like architectures. An evolution-inspired (Evo) space recombines endogenous metabolite fragments via enzyme-consistent transformations, introducing an evolutionary prior into chemical generation. This bias yields favorable shifts in predicted metabolic and toxicological profiles while preserving pharmacological diversity, supported by broad docking enrichment across therapeutic targets. In Editing mode, SpaceGFN enables reaction-consistent lead optimization through a curated toolkit of executable synthetic transformations, allowing local, synthesis-aware modification of existing compounds instead of unrestricted graph mutation. Across 96 drug targets, SpaceGFN achieves strong optimization performance while maintaining structural diversity under synthetic constraints. By integrating programmable chemical universe construction with flow-based exploration and reaction-level editing, SpaceGFN establishes a general paradigm for deliberate navigation of therapeutic chemical space.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2025

Antarctic TianMu Staring Observation Project I: Overview and Implementation of the Prototype Telescope

Wide-field rapid sky surveys serve as critical observational methods for time-domain astronomical research. The Antarctic region, with several months of continuous dark nights annually, is an ideal site for time-domain astronomical observations. The Antarctic TianMu Staring Observation Project aims to deploy a fleet of small telescopes, adopting an array observation model to conduct time-domain optical observations in Antarctica, featuring wide-sky coverage, high-cadence sampling, long-period staring, and simultaneous multi-band measurements. Considering the severe challenges optical telescopes face in Antarctica, including extremely low temperatures, unattended operation, and limited power supply and network transmission, we have designed and developed the Antarctic TianMu prototype telescope based on drift-scan charge-coupled device technology. In October 2022, our prototype (with an aperture of 18 cm), named AT-Proto was transported to Zhongshan Station in Antarctica aboard China's 39th Antarctic Research Expedition. It has since operated stably and reliably in the frigid environment for over two years, demonstrating the significant advantages of this technology in polar astronomical observations. The experimental observation results of AT-Proto provide a solid foundation for the subsequent construction of a time-domain astronomy observation array in Antarctica.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2025

Photometric Objects Around Cosmic Webs (PAC) Delineated in a Spectroscopic Survey. VIII. Revisiting the Lensing is Low Effect

The issue of over-predicting the galaxy-galaxy lensing (GGL) signal using conventional galaxy-halo connection models has become well-known as the ``Lensing is Low'' problem, which has been extensively investigated using the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) galaxy samples. This issue is also tightly related to the so-called $S_8$ tension. By applying our Photometric objects Around Cosmic webs (PAC) method to the BOSS survey and the DESI deep photometric survey, we obtained hundreds of cross-correlation measurements to establish an accurate galaxy-halo connection for BOSS galaxies through the halo abundance matching technique (Paper IV). With this galaxy-halo connection, we show in this work that the predicted GGL signals for BOSS galaxies both in the Planck and WMAP Universes actually agree very well with the GGL measurements. We find the best-fitting value $S_8 = 0.8294 \pm 0.0110$, $0.8073 \pm 0.0372$ and $0.8189 \pm 0.0440$ for the CMASS samples with the source galaxies from HSC, DES and KiDS image surveys, respectively. Our work indicates that accurate modeling of the lens population is so critical to interpret the GGL observation. For the scale of $r_p < 0.6\,h^{-1}\rm{Mpc}$, our GGL prediction for LOWZ samples are also in good agreement with the observations of HSC and DES. However, the GGL observation of KiDS is much lower on the small scale. Our results indicate that no significant baryon feedback is needed to suppress the small scale clustering unless the the GGL observation of KiDS on the small scale will be confirmed.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Photometric Objects Around Cosmic Webs (PAC). VII. Disentangling Mass and Environment Quenching with the Aid of Galaxy-halo Connection in Simulations

Star formation quenching in galaxies is a critical process in galaxy formation. It is widely believed that the quenching process is dominated by the mass of galaxies and/or their environment. In Paper V, we addressed the challenge to disentangle the effects of mass and environment by employing the PAC method, which combines spectroscopic and deep photometric surveys. This approach enabled us to measure the excess surface density of blue and red galaxies around massive central galaxies down to $10^{9.0}M_{\odot}$. However, it is not straightforward to completely separate the two effects. To address this issue, in this paper, we derive the average quenched fraction of central (isolated) galaxies, $\bar{f}_{\mathrm{q}}^{\mathrm{cen}}(M_{*})$, by combining the 3D quenched fraction distribution $f^{\mathrm{sat}}_{\mathrm{q}}(r; M_{*,\mathrm{cen}}, M_{*,\mathrm{sat}})$, reconstructed from the $\bar{n}_2w_{\mathrm{p}}(r_{\mathrm{p}})$ measurements, with the stellar mass-halo mass relation in N-body simulations from Paper IV, and the observed total quenched fraction, $\bar{f}_{\mathrm{q}}^{\mathrm{all}}(M_{*})$. Using $f^{\mathrm{sat}}_{\mathrm{q}}(r;M_{*,\mathrm{cen}},M_{*,\mathrm{sat}})$, $\bar{f}_{\mathrm{q}}^{\mathrm{cen}}(M_{*})$, and the galaxy-halo connection, we assign a quenched probability to each (sub)halo in the simulation, enabling a comprehensive study of galaxy quenching. We find that the mass-quenched fraction increases from 0.3 to 0.87 across the stellar mass range $[10^{9.5}, 10^{11.0}]M_{\odot}$, while the environmental quenched fraction decreases from 0.17 to 0.03. The mass effect dominates galaxy quenching across the entire stellar mass range we studied. Moreover, more massive host halos are more effective at quenching their satellite galaxies, while satellite stellar mass has minimal influence on environmental quenching.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2024

How does the velocity anisotropy of halo stars, dark matter and satellite galaxies depend on host halo properties?

We investigate the mass ($M_{200}$) and concentration ($c_{200}$) dependencies of the velocity anisotropy ($\beta$) profiles for different components in the dark matter halo, including halo stars, dark matter and subhalos, using systems from the IllustrisTNG simulations. Beyond a critical radius, $\beta$ becomes more radial with the increase of $M_{200}$, reflecting more prominent radial accretion around massive halos. The critical radius is $r\sim r_s$, $0.3~r_s$ and $r_s$ for halo stars, dark matter and subhalos, with $r_s$ the scale radius of host halos. This dependence on $M_{200}$ is the strongest for subhalos, and the weakest for halo stars. In central regions, $\beta$ of halo stars and dark matter particles gets more isotropic with the increase of $M_{200}$ in TNG300 due to baryons. By contrast, $\beta$ of dark matter from the dark matter only TNG300-Dark run shows much weaker dependence on $M_{200}$ within $r_s$. Dark matter in TNG300 is slightly more isotropic than in TNG300-Dark at $0.2~r_s r_s$ as $\beta_\mathrm{star}-\beta_\mathrm{DM}=(-0.028 \pm 0.008)\log_{10}M_{200}/M_\odot + (0.690\pm0.010)$.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2024

PAC.V. The Roles of Mass and Environment in the Quenching of Galaxies

The roles that mass and environment play in the galaxy quenching are still under debate. Leveraging the Photometric objects Around Cosmic webs (PAC) method, we analyze the excess surface distribution $\bar{n}_2w_{\rm{p}}(r_{\rm{p}})$ of photometric galaxies in different color (rest-frame $u-r$) within the stellar mass range of $10^{9.0}M_{\odot}\sim10^{11.0}M_{\odot}$ around spectroscopic massive central galaxies ($10^{10.9}\sim10^{11.7}M_{\odot}$) at the redshift interval $0<z_s<0.7$, utilizing data from the Hyper SuprimeCam Subaru Strategic Program and the spectroscopic samples of Slogan Digital Sky Survey (i.e. Main, LOWZ and CMASS samples). We find that both mass and environment quenching contribute to the evolution of companion galaxies. To isolate the environment effect, we quantify the quenched fraction excess (QFE) of companion galaxies encircling massive central galaxies within $0.01h^{-1}{\rm{Mpc}}<r_{\rm{p}}<20h^{-1}\rm{Mpc}$, representing the surplus quenched fraction relative to the average. We find that the high density halo environment affects the star formation quenching up to about three times of the virial radius, and this effect becomes stronger at lower redshift. We also find that even after being scaled by the virial radius, the environment quenching efficiency is higher for more massive halos or for companion galaxies of higher stellar mass, though the trends are quite weak. We present a fitting formula that comprehensively captures the QFE across central and companion stellar mass bins, halo-centric distance bins, and redshift bins, offering a valuable tool for constraining galaxy formation models. Furthermore, we have made a quantitative comparison with Illustris-TNG that underscores some important differences, particularly in the excessive quenching of low-mass companion galaxies ($<10^{9.5}M_{\odot}$) by TNG.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

Photometric Objects Around Cosmic Webs (PAC). VI. High Satellite Fraction of Quasars

The Photometric objects Around Cosmic webs (PAC) approach developed in Xu et al. (2022b) has the advantage of making full use of spectroscopic and deeper photometric surveys. With the merits of PAC, the excess surface density $\bar{n}_2w_{{\rm{p}}}$ of neighboring galaxies can be measured down to stellar mass $10^{10.80}\,M_{\odot}$ around quasars at redshift $0.8<z_{\rm{s}}<1.0$, with the data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV) extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys. We find that $\bar{n}_2w_{{\rm{p}}}$ generally increases quite steeply with the decrease of the separation. Using subhalo abundance matching method, we can accurately model the $\bar{n}_2w_{{\rm{p}}}$ both on small and large scales. We show that the steep increase of the $\bar{n}_2w_{{\rm{p}}}$ towards the quasars requires that a large fraction $f_{\mathrm{sate}}=0.29_{-0.06}^{+0.05}$ of quasars should be satellites in massive halos, and find that this fraction measurement is insensitive to the assumptions of our modeling. This high satellite fraction indicates that the subhalos have nearly the same probability to host quasars as the halos for the same (infall) halo mass, and the large scale environment has negligible effect on the quasar activity. We show that even with this high satellite fraction, each massive halo on average does not host more than one satellite quasar due to the sparsity of quasars.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

The DESI One-Percent Survey: A concise model for galactic conformity of ELGs

Galactic conformity is the phenomenon in which a galaxy of a certain physical property is correlated with its neighbors of the same property, implying a possible causal relationship. The observed auto correlations of emission line galaxies (ELGs) from the highly complete DESI One-Percent survey exhibit a strong clustering signal on small scales, providing clear evidence for the conformity effect of ELGs. Building upon the original subhalo abundance matching (SHAM) method developed by Gao et al. (2022, 2023), we propose a concise conformity model to improve the ELG-halo connection. In this model, the number of satellite ELGs is boosted by a factor of $\sim 5$ in the halos whose central galaxies are ELGs. We show that the mean ELG satellite number in such central halos is still smaller than 1, and the model does not significantly increase the overall satellite fraction. With this model, we can well recover the ELG auto correlations to the smallest scales explored with the current data (i.e. $r_{\mathrm{p}} > 0.03$ $\mathrm{Mpc}\,h^{-1}$ in real space and at $s > 0.3$ $\mathrm{Mpc}\,h^{-1}$ in redshift space), while the cross correlations between luminous red galaxies (LRGs) and ELGs are nearly unchanged. Although our SHAM model has only 8 parameters, we further verify that it can accurately describe the ELG clustering in the entire redshift range from $z = 0.8$ to $1.6$. We therefore expect that this method can be used to generate high-quality ELG lightcone mocks for DESI.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

Toward a Physical Understanding of Galaxy-Halo Alignment

We investigate the alignment of galaxy and halo orientations using the TNG300-1 hydrodynamical simulation. Our analysis reveals that the distribution of the 2D misalignment angle $\theta_{\rm{2D}}$ can be well described by a truncated shifted exponential (TSE) distribution with only {\textit{one}} free parameter across different redshifts and galaxy/halo properties. We demonstrate that the galaxy-ellipticity (GI) correlations of galaxies can be reproduced by perturbing halo orientations with the obtained $\theta_{\rm{2D}}$ distribution, with only a small bias ($<3^{\circ}$) possibly arising from unaccounted couplings between $\theta_{\rm{2D}}$ and other factors. We find that both the 2D and 3D misalignment angles $\theta_{\rm{2D}}$ and $\theta_{\rm{3D}}$ decrease with ex situ stellar mass fraction $F_{\rm{acc}}$, halo mass $M_{\rm{vir}}$ and stellar mass $M_{*}$, while increasing with disk-to-total stellar mass fraction $F_{\rm{disk}}$ and redshift. These dependences are in good agreement with our recent observational study based on the BOSS galaxy samples. Our results suggest that $F_{\rm{acc}}$ is a key factor in determining the galaxy-halo alignment. Grouping galaxies by $F_{\rm{acc}}$ nearly eliminates the dependence of $\theta_{\rm{3D}}$ on $M_{\rm{vir}}$ for all three principle axes, and also reduces the redshift dependence. For $\theta_{\rm{2D}}$, we find a more significant redshift dependence than for $\theta_{\rm{3D}}$ even after controlling $F_{\rm{acc}}$, which may be attributed to the evolution of galaxy and halo shapes. Our findings present a valuable model for observational studies and enhance our understanding of galaxy-halo alignment.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

The DESI One-Percent survey: constructing galaxy-halo connections for ELGs and LRGs using auto and cross correlations

In the current Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey, emission line galaxies (ELGs) and luminous red galaxies (LRGs) are essential for mapping the dark matter distribution at $z \sim 1$. We measure the auto and cross correlation functions of ELGs and LRGs at $0.8 0.1$ $\mathrm{Mpc}\,h^{-1}$. We can also reproduce the auto correlations of ELGs at $r_{\mathrm{p}}>0.3$ $\mathrm{Mpc}\,h^{-1}$ ($s>1$ $\mathrm{Mpc}\,h^{-1}$) in real (redshift) space. Although our model has only seven parameters, we show that it can be extended to higher redshifts and reproduces the observed auto correlations of ELGs in the whole range of $0.8<z<1.6$, which enables us to generate a lightcone ELG mock for DESI. With the above model, we further derive halo occupation distributions (HODs) for ELGs which can be used to produce ELG mocks in coarse simulations without resolving subhalos.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

The Universal Specific Merger Rate of Dark Matter Halos

We employ a set of high resolution N-body simulations to study the merger rate of dark matter halos. We define a specific merger rate by normalizing the average number of mergers per halo with the logarithmic mass growth change of the hosts at the time of accretion. Based on the simulation results, we find that this specific merger rate, $\mathrm{d}N_{\mathrm{merge}}(ξ|M,z)/\mathrm{d}ξ/\mathrm{d}\log M(z)$, has a universal form, which is only a function of the mass ratio of merging halo pairs, $ξ$, and does not depend on the host halo mass, $M$, or redshift, $z$, over a wide range of masses ($10^{12}\lesssim M \lesssim10^{14}\,M_\odot/h$) and merger ratios ($ξ\ge 1e-2$). We further test with simulations of different $Ω_m$ and $σ_8$, and get the same specific merger rate. The universality of the specific merger rate shows that halos in the universe are built up self-similarly, with a universal composition in the mass contributions and an absolute merger rate that grows in proportion to the halo mass growth. As a result, the absolute merger rate relates with redshift and cosmology only through the halo mass variable, whose evolution can be readily obtained from the universal mass accretion history (MAH) model of \cite{2009ApJ...707..354Z}. Lastly, we show that this universal specific merger rate immediately predicts an universal un-evolved subhalo mass function that is independent on the redshift, MAH or the final halo mass, and vice versa.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2012

Bulk flow of halos in ΛCDM simulation

Analysis of the Pangu N-body simulation validates that the bulk flow of halos follows a Maxwellian distribution which variance is consistent with the prediction of the linear theory of structure formation. We propose that the consistency between the observed bulk velocity and theories should be examined at the effective scale of the radius of a spherical top-hat window function yielding the same smoothed velocity variance in linear theory as the sample window function does. We compared some recently estimated bulk flows from observational samples with the prediction of the ΛCDM model we used; some results deviate from expectation at a level of ~ 3σbut the discrepancy is not as severe as previously claimed. We show that bulk flow is only weakly correlated with the dipole of the internal mass distribution, the alignment angle between the mass dipole and the bulk flow has a broad distribution peaked at ~ 30-50 deg., and also that the bulk flow shows little dependence on the mass of the halos used in the estimation. In a simulation of box size 1Gpc/h, for a cell of radius 100 Mpc/h the maximal bulk velocity is >500 km/s, dipoles of the environmental mass outside the cell are not tightly aligned with the bulk flow, but are rather located randomly around it with separation angles ~ 20-40 deg. In the fastest cell there is a slightly smaller number of low-mass halos; however halos inside are clustered more strongly at scales > ~ 20 Mpc/h, which might be a significant feature since the correlation between bulk flow and halo clustering actually increases in significance beyond such scales.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2002

The Growth and Structure of Dark Matter Haloes

In this paper, we analyse in detail the mass-accretion histories and structural properties of dark haloes in high-resolution N-body simulations. Modeling the density distribution in individual haloes with the NFW profile, we find, for all main progenitors of a given halo, there is a tight correlation between its inner scale radius $r_s$ and the mass within it, $M_s$, which is the basic reason why halo structural properties are closely related to their mass-accretion histories. This correlation can be used to predict accurately the structural properties of a dark halo at any time from its mass-accretion history. We also test our model with a large sample of GIF haloes. The build-up of dark haloes in CDM models generally consists of an early phase of fast accretion and a late phase of slow accretion [where $M_h$ increases with time approximately as the expansion rate]. These two phases are separated at a time when the halo concentration parameter $c\sim 4$. Haloes in the two accretion phases show systematically different properties, for example, the circular velocity $v_h$ increases rapidly with time in the fast accretion phase but remain almost constant in the slow accretion phase,the inner properties of a halo, such as $r_s$ and $M_s$ increase rapidly with time in the fast accretion phase but change only slowly in the slow accretion phase. The potential well associated with a halo is built up mainly in the fast accretion phase, even though a large amount of mass (over 10 times) can be accreted in the slow accretion phase. We discuss our results in connection to the formation of dark haloes and galaxies in hierarchical models.

astro-ph↗