Cosmic Dragons: A Two-Component Mixture Model of COSMOS Galaxies

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Auteurs principaux: Black, William K., Evrard, August E.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2023
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author Black, William K.
Evrard, August E.
author_facet Black, William K.
Evrard, August E.
contents Using the photometric population prediction method {\bf Red Dragon}, we characterize the Red Sequence (RS) and Blue Cloud (BC) of DES galaxies in the COSMOS field. Red Dragon (RD) uses a redshift-evolving, error-corrected Gaussian mixture model to detail the distribution of photometric colors, smoothly parameterizing the two populations with relative weights, mean colors, intrinsic scatters, and inter-color correlations. This resulting fit of RS and BC yields RS membership probabilities $P_{\rm RS}$ for each galaxy. Even when training on only DES main bands $griz$, RD selects the quiescent population (defined here as galaxies with $\lg {\rm sSFR \cdot yr} < -11$) with $\gtrsim 90\%$ balanced accuracy out to $z=2$; augmenting with extended photometry from VIRCAM improves this accuracy to $\sim 95\%$ out to $z=3$. We measure redshift evolution of sSFR and galactic age in several stellar mass bins, finding that the BC is consistently more star-forming (by $\gtrsim 1~{\rm dex}$) and typically younger (by $\gtrsim 1~{\rm Gyr}$) than the RS (up to $z \sim 1.4$). This characterization of both RS and BC as functions of redshift and stellar mass improves our understanding of both populations and opens the door to more precise galaxy population characterization in future deep optical and IR systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_09374
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cosmic Dragons: A Two-Component Mixture Model of COSMOS Galaxies
Black, William K.
Evrard, August E.
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Using the photometric population prediction method {\bf Red Dragon}, we characterize the Red Sequence (RS) and Blue Cloud (BC) of DES galaxies in the COSMOS field. Red Dragon (RD) uses a redshift-evolving, error-corrected Gaussian mixture model to detail the distribution of photometric colors, smoothly parameterizing the two populations with relative weights, mean colors, intrinsic scatters, and inter-color correlations. This resulting fit of RS and BC yields RS membership probabilities $P_{\rm RS}$ for each galaxy. Even when training on only DES main bands $griz$, RD selects the quiescent population (defined here as galaxies with $\lg {\rm sSFR \cdot yr} < -11$) with $\gtrsim 90\%$ balanced accuracy out to $z=2$; augmenting with extended photometry from VIRCAM improves this accuracy to $\sim 95\%$ out to $z=3$. We measure redshift evolution of sSFR and galactic age in several stellar mass bins, finding that the BC is consistently more star-forming (by $\gtrsim 1~{\rm dex}$) and typically younger (by $\gtrsim 1~{\rm Gyr}$) than the RS (up to $z \sim 1.4$). This characterization of both RS and BC as functions of redshift and stellar mass improves our understanding of both populations and opens the door to more precise galaxy population characterization in future deep optical and IR systems.
title Cosmic Dragons: A Two-Component Mixture Model of COSMOS Galaxies
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.09374