arXiv subjects

Xi Kang

Publications and source records attributed to Xi Kang.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Can we constrain galaxy geometry parameters using spatially integrated SED fitting?

Sophisticated spectral energy distribution (SED) models describe dust attenuation and emission using geometry parameters. This treatment is natural since dust effects are driven by the underlying star-dust geometry in galaxies. An example is the Starduster SED model, which divides a galaxy into a stellar disk, a stellar bulge, and a dust disk. This work utilises the Starduster SED model to study the efficacy of inferring geometry parameters using spatially integrated SED fitting. Our method fits the SED model to mock photometry produced by combining a semi-analytic model with the same SED model. Our fitting results imply that the disk radius can be constrained, while the inclination angle, dust disk to stellar disk radius ratio, bulge radius and intrinsic bulge to total luminosity ratio are unconstrained, even though 21 filters from UV to FIR are used. We also study the impact of S/N, finding that the increase of S/N (up to 80) brings limited improvements to the results. We provide a detailed discussion to explain these findings, and point out the implications for models with more general geometry.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Constraining galactic baryon cycle using the galaxy stellar-to-halo mass relations

Galaxies display several well-behaved scaling relations between their properties, such as the star formation rate-stellar mass relation (the main sequence) and the stellar mass-halo mass relation (SHMR). In principle, these scaling relations could imply different star formation histories (SFHs) of galaxies and different constraints on galaxy formation physics. In this paper, we derive the SFHs of galaxies by assuming that they always follow the SHMRs at different redshifts and use an empirical model to constrain key processes in their baryon cycle. It is found that, besides cold accretion due to halo growth, outflow of gas produced by stellar feedback has to be recycled to sustain the derived SFHs of galaxies. The recycled fraction is strongly affected by the baryon fraction in accreted low-mass haloes and the mass loading factor which quantifies the ratio between the galactic outflow rate and star formation rate. Our fiducial model predicts that around $20-60\%$ of outflow is recycled in $\sim0.5-4Gyrs$, while simulations predict a slightly higher recycle fraction and a lower recycle time. We argue that strong constraints on the baryon cycle process can be obtained from future observation of the circum-galactic medium (CGM) of galaxies, such as the gas cooling rate of CGM. We also find that the implied SFHs from the SHMRs indicate that galaxies stay on the main sequences only for part of their lifetimes. Our model reproduces the evolution of the mass-metallicity relation as well.

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arXiv2022

Testing the galaxy collision induced formation scenario for the trail of dark matter deficient galaxies with the susceptibility of globular clusters to the tidal force

It has been suggested that a trail of diffuse galaxies, including two dark matter deficient galaxies (DMDGs), in the vicinity of NGC1052 formed because of a high-speed collision between two gas-rich dwarf galaxies, one bound to NGC1052 and the other one on an unbound orbit. The collision compresses the gas reservoirs of the colliding galaxies, which in turn triggers a burst of star formation. In contrast, the dark matter and pre-existing stars in the progenitor galaxies pass through it. Since the high pressures in the compressed gas are conducive to the formation of massive globular clusters (GCs), this scenario can explain the formation of DMDGs with large populations of massive GCs, consistent with the observations of NGC1052-DF2 (DF2) and NGC1052-DF4. A potential difficulty with this `mini bullet cluster' scenario is that the observed spatial distributions of GCs in DMDGs are extended. GCs experience dynamical friction causing their orbits to decay with time. Consequently, their distribution at formation should have been even more extended than that observed at present. Using a semi-analytic model, we show that the observed positions and velocities of the GCs in DF2 imply that they must have formed at a radial distance of 5-10kpc from the center of DF2. However, as we demonstrate, the scenario is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the strong tidal forces from NGC1052 strip the extendedly distributed GCs from DF2, requiring 33-59 massive GCs to form at the collision to explain observations.

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arXiv2022

Effects of galaxy intrinsic alignment on weak lensing peak statistics

The galaxy intrinsic alignment (IA) is a dominant source of systematics in weak lensing (WL) studies. In this paper, by employing large simulations with semi-analytical galaxy formation, we investigate the IA effects on WL peak statistics. Different simulated source galaxy samples of different redshift distributions are constructed, where both WL shear and IA signals are included. Convergence reconstruction and peak statistics are then performed for these samples. Our results show that the IA effects on peak abundances mainly consist of two aspects. One is the additional contribution from IA to the shape noise. The other is from the satellite IA that can affect the peak signals from their host clusters significantly. The latter depends on the level of inclusion in a shear sample of the satellite galaxies of the clusters that contribute to WL peaks, and thus is sensitive to the redshift distribution of source galaxies. We pay particular attention to satellite IA and adjust it artificially in the simulations to analyze the dependence of the satellite IA impacts on its strength. This information can potentially be incorporated into the modeling of WL peak abundances, especially for high peaks physically originated from massive clusters of galaxies, and thus to mitigate the IA systematics on the cosmological constraints derived from WL peaks.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Towards Super-resolution via Iterative multi-exposure Coaddition

In this article, we provide an alternative up-sampling and PSF deconvolution method for the iterative multi-exposure coaddition. Different from the previous works, the new method has a ratio-correction term, which allows the iterations to converge more rapidly to an accurate representation of the underlying image than those with difference-correction terms. By employing this method, one can coadd the under-sampled multi-exposures to a super-resolution and obtain a higher peak signal-to-noise ratio. A set of simulations show that we can take many advantages of the new method, e.g. in the signal-to-noise ratio, the average deviation of all source fluxes, super-resolution, and source distortion ratio, etc., which are friendly to astronomical photometry and morphology, and benefits faint source detection and shear measurement of weak gravitational lensing. It provides an improvement in fidelity over the previous works tested in this paper.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2022

A stochastic model to reproduce the star-formation history of individual galaxies in hydrodynamic simulations

The star formation history (SFH) of galaxies is critical for understanding galaxy evolution. Hydrodynamical simulations enable us to precisely reconstruct the SFH of galaxies and establish a link to the underlying physical processes. In this work, we present a model to describe individual galaxies' SFHs from three simulations: TheThreeHundred, Illustris-1 and TNG100-1. This model divides the galaxy SFH into two distinct components: the "main sequence" and the "variation". The "main sequence" part is generated by tracing the history of the $SFR-M_*$ main sequence of galaxies across time. The "variation" part consists of the scatter around the main sequence, which is reproduced by fractional Brownian motions. We find that: 1) The evolution of the main sequence varies between simulations; 2) fractional Brownian motions can reproduce many features of SFHs, however, discrepancies still exist; 3) The variations and mass-loss rate are crucial for reconstructing the SFHs of the simulations. This model provides a fair description of the SFHs in simulations. On the other hand, by correlating the fractional Brownian motion model to simulation data, we provide a 'standard' against which to compare simulations.

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arXiv2022

About One-point Statistics of the Ratio of Two Fourier-transformed Cosmic Fields and an Application

The Fourier transformation is an effective and efficient operation of Gaussianization at the one-point level. Using a set of N-body simulation data, we verified that the one-point distribution functions of the dark matter momentum divergence and density fields closely follow complex Gaussian distributions. The one-point distribution function of the quotient of two complex Gaussian variables is introduced and studied. Statistical theories are then applied to model one-point statistics about the growth of individual Fourier mode of the dark matter density field, which can be obtained by the ratio of two Fourier transformed cosmic fields. Our simulation results proved that the models based on the Gaussian approximation are impressively accurate, and our analysis revealed many interesting aspects about the growth of dark matter's density fluctuation in Fourier space.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Cold-mode and hot-mode accretion in galaxy formation: an entropy approach

We have analysed two cosmological zoom simulations with $M_{\rm vir}\sim 10^{12}{\rm\,M}_\odot$ from the NIHAO series, both with and without feedback. We show that an entropy criterion based on the equation of state of the intergalactic medium can successfully separate cold- and hot-mode accretion. The shock-heated gas has non-negligible turbulent support and cools inefficiently. In the simulations without feedback, only a small fraction ($\sim 20$ per cent) of the stellar mass comes from baryons that have been in the hot circumgalactic medium, although quantitative conclusions should be taken with caution due to our small-number statistics. With feedback, the fraction is larger because of the reaccretion of gas heated by supernovae, which has lower entropies and shorter cooling times than the gas heated by accretion shocks. We have compared the results of NIHAO to predictions of the GalICS 2.1 semianalytic model of galaxy formation. The shock-stability criterion implemented in GalICS 2.1 successfully reproduces the transition from cold- to hot-mode accretion.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

NIHAO XXVIII: Collateral effects of AGN on dark matter concentration and stellar kinematics

Although active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback is required in simulations of galaxies to regulate star formation, further downstream effects on the dark matter distribution of the halo and stellar kinematics of the central galaxy can be expected. We combine simulations of galaxies with and without AGN physics from the Numerical Investigation of a Hundred Astrophysical Objects (NIHAO) to investigate the effect of AGN on the dark matter profile and central stellar rotation of the host galaxies. Specifically, we study how the concentration-halo mass ($c-M$) relation and the stellar spin parameter ($λ_R$) are affected by AGN feedback. We find that AGN physics is crucial to reduce the central density of simulated massive ($\gtrsim 10^{12}$ M$_\odot$) galaxies and bring their concentration to agreement with results from the Spitzer Photometry & Accurate Rotation Curves (SPARC) sample. Similarly, AGN feedback has a key role in reproducing the dichotomy between slow and fast rotators as observed by the ATLAS$^{3\text{D}}$ survey. Without star formation suppression due to AGN feedback, the number of fast rotators strongly exceeds the observational constraints. Our study shows that there are several collateral effects that support the importance of AGN feedback in galaxy formation, and these effects can be used to constrain its implementation in numerical simulations.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

NIHAO XXVII: Crossing the green valley

The transition of high-mass galaxies from being blue and star forming to being red and dead is a crucial step in galaxy evolution, yet not fully understood. In this work, we use the NIHAO suite of galaxy simulations to investigate the relation between the transition time through the green valley and other galaxy properties. The typical green valley crossing time of our galaxies is approximately 400 Myr, somewhat shorter than observational estimates. The crossing of the green valley is triggered by the onset of AGN feedback and the subsequent shut down of star formation. Interestingly the time spent in the green valley is not related to any other galaxy properties, such as stellar age or metallicity, or the time at which the star formation quenching takes place. The crossing time is set by two main contributions: the ageing of the current stellar population and the residual star formation in the green valley. These effects are of comparable magnitude, while major and minor mergers have a negligible contribution. Most interestingly, we find the time that a galaxy spends to travel through the green valley is twice the $e$-folding time of the star formation quenching. This result is stable against galaxy properties and the exact numerical implementation of AGN feedback in the simulation. Assuming a typical crossing time of about one Gyr inferred from observations, our results imply that any mechanism or process aiming to quench star formation, must do it on a typical timescale of 500 Myr.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Starduster: A multi-wavelength SED model based on radiative transfer simulations and deep learning

We present Starduster, a supervised deep learning model that predicts the multi-wavelength SED from galaxy geometry parameters and star formation history by emulating dust radiative transfer simulations. The model is comprised of three specifically designed neural networks, which take into account the features of dust attenuation and emission. We utilise the Skirt radiative transfer simulation to produce data for the training data of neural networks. Each neural network can be trained using ~ 4000 - 5000 samples. Compared with the direct results of the Skirt simulation, our deep learning model produces ~ 0.005 mag and ~ 0.1 - 0.2 mag errors for dust attenuation and emission respectively. As an application, we fit our model to the observed SEDs of IC4225 and NGC5166. Our model can reproduce the observations, and provide reasonable measurements of the inclination angle and stellar mass. However, some predicted geometry parameters are different from an image-fitting study. Our analysis implies that including a constraint at (rest-frame) ~ 40 micron could alleviate the degeneracy in the parameter space for both IC4225 and NGC5166, leading to broadly consistent results with the image-fitting predictions. Our SED code is publicly available and can be applied to both SED-fitting and SED-modelling of galaxies from semi-analytic models.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2022

Spin conservation of cosmic filaments

Cosmic filaments are the largest collapsing structure in the Universe. Recently both observations and simulations inferred that cosmic filaments have coherent angular momenta (spins). Here we use filament finders to identify the filamentary structures in cosmological simulations and study their physical origins, which are well described by the primordial tidal torque of their Lagrangian counterpart regions -- protofilaments. This initial angular momenta statistically preserve their directions to low redshifts. We further show that a spin reconstruction method can predict the spins of filaments and potentially relate their spins to the initial conditions of the Universe. This correlation provides a new way of constraining and obtaining additional information of the initial perturbations of the Universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2022

Quenching of Massive Disk Galaxies in the IllustrisTNG Simulation

A rare population of massive disk galaxies have been found to invade the red sequence dominated by early-type galaxies. These red/quenched massive disk galaxies have recently gained great interest into their formation and origins. The usually proposed quenching mechanisms, such as bar quenching and environment quenching, seem not suitable for those bulge-less quenched disks in low-density environment. In this paper, we use the IllustrisTNG-300 simulation to investigate the formation of massive quenched central disk galaxies. It is found that these galaxies contain less gas and harbor giant supermassive black holes(SMBHs) (above $ 10^{8}M_{\odot}$) than their star forming counterparts. By tracing their formation history, we found that quenched disk galaxies formed early and preserved disk morphology for cosmological time scales. They have experienced less than one major merger on average and it is mainly mini-mergers (mass ratio $<$1/10) that contribute to the growth of their SMBHs. In the Illustris-TNG simulation the black hole feedback mode switches from thermal to kinetic feedback when the black hole mass is more massive than $\sim 10^{8}M_{\odot}$, which is more efficient to eject gas outside of the galaxy and to suppress further cooling of hot gaseous halo. We conclude that kinetic AGN feedback in massive red/quenched disk galaxy is the dominant quenching mechanism.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

The Formation of M101-alike Galaxies in the Cold Dark Matter Model

The population of satellite galaxies in a host galaxy is a combination of the cumulative accretion of subhaloes and their associated star formation efficiencies, therefore, the luminosity distribution of satellites provides valuable information of both dark matter properties and star formation physics. Recently, the luminosity function of satellites in nearby Milky Way-mass galaxies has been well measured to satellites as faint as Leo I with $M_{V} \sim -8$. In addition to the finding of the diversity in the satellite luminosity functions, it has been noticed that there is a big gap among the magnitude of satellites in some host galaxies, such as M101, where the gap is around 5 in magnitude, noticeably larger than the prediction from the halo abundance matching method. The reason of this gap is still unknown. In this paper, we use a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation, combined with high-resolution N-body simulation, to investigate the probability and origin of such big gap in M101-alike galaxies. We found that, although M101 analogues are very rare with probability of \sim 0.1%-0.2% in the local universe, their formation is a natural outcome of the CDM model. The gap in magnitude is mainly due to the mass of the accreted subhaloes, not from the stochastic star formation in them. We also found that the gap is correlated with the total satellite mass and host halo mass. By tracing the formation history of M101 type galaxies, we find that they likely formed after $z \sim 1$ due to the newly accreted bright satellites. The gap is not in a stable state, and it will disappear in ~7 Gyr due to mergers of bright satellites with the central galaxy.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

Cosmic Web-Halo Connection Between Twin Universes

Both simulation and observational data have shown that the spin and shape of dark matter halos are correlated with their nearby large-scale environment. As structure formation on different scales is strongly coupled, it is trick to disentangle the formation of halo with the large-scale environment, making it difficult to infer which is the driving force for the correlation between halo spin/shape with the large-scale structure. In this paper, we use N-body simulation to produce twin Universes that share the same initial conditions on small scales but different on large scales. This is achieved by changing the random seeds for the phase of those k modes smaller than a given scale in the initial conditions. In this way, we are able to disentangle the formation of halo and large-scale structure, making it possible to investigate how halo spin and shape correspond to the change of environment on large scales. We identify matching halo pairs in the twin simulations as those sharing the maximum number of identical particles within each other. Using these matched halo pairs, we study the cross match of halo spin and their correlation with the large-scale structure. It is found that when the large-scale environment changes (eigenvector) between the twin simulations, the halo spin has to rotate accordingly, although not significantly, to maintain the universal correlation seen in each simulation. Our results suggest that the large-scale structure is the main factor to drive the correlation between halo properties and their environment.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Possible observational evidence that cosmic filaments spin

Most cosmological structures in the universe spin. Although structures in the universe form on a wide variety of scales from small dwarf galaxies to large super clusters, the generation of angular momentum across these scales is poorly understood. We have investigated the possibility that filaments of galaxies - cylindrical tendrils of matter hundreds of millions of light-years across, are themselves spinning. By stacking thousands of filaments together and examining the velocity of galaxies perpendicular to the filament's axis (via their red and blue shift), we have found that these objects too display motion consistent with rotation making them the largest objects known to have angular momentum. The strength of the rotation signal is directly dependent on the viewing angle and the dynamical state of the filament. Just as it is easiest to measure rotation in a spinning disk galaxy viewed edge on, so too is filament rotation clearly detected under similar geometric alignment. Furthermore, the mass of the haloes that sit at either end of the filaments also increases the spin speed. The more massive the haloes, the more rotation is detected. These results signify that angular momentum can be generated on unprecedented scales.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

The lopsided distribution of satellites of isolated central galaxies

Satellites are not randomly distributed around their central galaxies but show polar and planar structures. In this paper, we investigate the axis-asymmetry or lopsidedness of satellite galaxy distributions around isolated galaxies in a hydrodynamic cosmological simulation. We find a statistically significant lopsided signal by studying the angular distribution of the satellite galaxies' projected positions around isolated central galaxies in a two-dimensional plane. The signal is dependent on galaxy mass, color and large-scale environment. Satellites that inhabit low-mass blue hosts, or located further from the hosts show the most lopsided signal. Galaxy systems with massive neighbors exhibit stronger lopsidedness. This satellite axis-asymmetry signal also decreases as the universe evolves. Our findings are in agreement with recent observational results, and they provide a useful perspective for studying galaxy evolution, especially on the satellite accretion, internal evolution and interaction with the cosmic large-scale structure.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2021

The Merger Dynamics of the Galaxy Cluster Abell 1775: New Insights from Chandra and XMM-Newton for a Cluster Simultaneously Hosting a WAT and a NAT Radio Sources

We present a new study of the merger dynamics of Abell~1775 by analyzing the high-quality Chandra and XMM-Newton archival data. We confirm/identify an arc-shaped edge (i.e., the head) at $\sim48$~kpc west of the X-ray peak, a split cold gas tail that extends eastward to $\sim163$~kpc, and a plume of spiral-like X-ray excess (within about $81-324$~kpc northeast of the cluster core) that connects to the end of the tail. The head, across which the projected gas temperature rises outward from $3.39_{-0.18}^{+0.28}$~keV to $5.30_{-0.43}^{+0.54}$~keV, is found to be a cold front with a Mach number of $\mathcal{M}\sim0.79$. Along the surfaces of the cold front and tail, typical KHI features (noses and wings, etc.) are found and are used to constrain the upper limit of the magnetic field ($\sim11.2~μ$G) and the viscosity suppression factor ($\sim0.01$). Combining optical and radio evidence we propose a two-body merger (instead of systematic motion in a large-scale gas environment) scenario and have carried out idealized hydrodynamic simulations to verify it. We find that the observed X-ray emission and temperature distributions can be best reproduced with a merger mass ratio of 5 after the first pericentric passage. The NAT radio galaxy is thus more likely to be a single galaxy falling into the cluster center at a relative velocity of 2800~$\rm km~s^{-1}$, a speed constrained by its radio morphology. The infalling subcluster is expected to have a relatively low gas content, because only a gas-poor subcluster can cause central-only disturbances as observed in such an off-axis merger.

astro-ph.CO↗