Simulating galaxies in the reionization era with FIRE-2: Galaxy scaling relations, stellar mass functions, and luminosity functions

Xiangcheng Ma*, Philip F. Hopkins, Shea Garrison-Kimmel, Claude André Faucher-Giguére, Eliot Quataert, Michael Boylan-Kolchin, Christopher C. Hayward, Robert Feldmann, Dušan Kereš

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

140 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present a suite of cosmological zoom-in simulations at z ≥ 5 from the Feedback In Realistic Environments project, spanning a halo mass range Mhalo ~ 108-1012M at z = 5. We predict the stellar mass-halo mass relation, stellar mass function, and luminosity function in several bands from z = 5 to 12. The median stellar mass-halo mass relation does not evolve strongly at z = 5-12. The faint-end slope of the luminosity function steepens with increasing redshift, as inherited from the halo mass function at these redshifts. Below z ~ 6, the stellar mass function and ultraviolet (UV) luminosity function slightly flatten below M* ~ 104.5M (fainter than M1500 ~ -12), owing to the fact that star formation in low-mass haloes is suppressed by the ionizing background by the end of reionization. Such flattening does not appear at higher redshifts. We provide redshift-dependent fitting functions for the SFR-Mhalo, SFR-M*, and broad-band magnitude-stellar mass relations. We derive the star formation rate density and stellar mass density at z = 5-12 and show that the contribution from very faint galaxies becomes more important at z > 8. Furthermore, we find that the decline in the z ~ 6 UV luminosity function brighter than M1500 ~ -20 is largely due to dust attenuation. Approximately 37 per cent (54 per cent) of the UV luminosity from galaxies brighter than M1500 =-13 (-17) is obscured by dust at z ~ 6. Our results broadly agree with current data and can be tested by future observations.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1694-1715
Number of pages22
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume478
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 1 2018

Funding

We thank J. J. Eldridge, Steven Finkelstein, Renyue Cen, Frank van den Bosch, Priya Natarajan, Avi Loeb, and Rychard Bouwens for helpful discussions. The simulations used in this paper were run on XSEDE computational resources (allocations TG-AST120025, TG-AST130039, TG-AST140023, and TG-AST140064). The analysis was performed on the Caltech compute cluster 'Zwicky' (NSF MRI award #PHY-0960291). Support for PFH was provided by an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, NASA ATP Grant NNX14AH35G, and NSF Collaborative Research Grant #1411920 and CAREER grant #1455342. Support for SGK was provided by NASA through Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship grant number PF5-160136 awarded by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for NASA under contract NAS8-03060. CAFG was supported by NSF through grants AST-1412836 and AST-1517491, by NASA through grant NNX15AB22G, and by STScI through grant HST-AR-14562.001. EQ was supported by NASA ATP grant 12-APT12-0183, a Simons Investigator award from the Simons Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. MBK was also partially supported by NASA through HST theory grants (programmes AR-12836, AR-13888, AR-13896, and AR-14282) awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., underNASA contract NAS5-26555. RF is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 157591). DK was supported by NSF grant AST-1412153, funds from the University of California, San Diego, and a Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement

Keywords

  • Cosmology: theory
  • Galaxies: evolution
  • Galaxies: formation
  • Galaxies: high-redshift

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

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