The relationship between galaxy size and halo properties: Insights from the IllustrisTNG simulations and differential clustering

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Somerville, Rachel S., Gabrielpillai, Austen, Hadzhiyska, Boryana, Genel, Shy
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Somerville, Rachel S.
Gabrielpillai, Austen
Hadzhiyska, Boryana
Genel, Shy
author_facet Somerville, Rachel S.
Gabrielpillai, Austen
Hadzhiyska, Boryana
Genel, Shy
contents The physical origin of the radial sizes of galaxies and how galaxy sizes are correlated with the properties of their host dark matter halos is an open question in galaxy formation. In observations, the large-scale clustering of galaxies selected by stellar mass is significantly different for large and small galaxies, and Behroozi et al. (2022) showed that these results are in tension with some of the correlations between galaxy size and halo properties in the literature. We analyze the IllustrisTNG suite of large volume cosmological hydrodynamic simulations along with dark matter only simulations with matched initial conditions. We investigate correlations between the ratio of galaxy size to halo virial radius ($r_{\rm gal}/R_{\rm vir}$) and halo spin, concentration, and formation time at redshift 0-3. We find a significant correlation between $r_{\rm gal}/R_{\rm vir}$ and concentration, but only above a critical value $c \simeq 16$, and we also find a correlation between $r_{\rm gal}/R_{\rm vir}$ and halo formation time. We suggest that galaxy formation history and environment, in addition to halo properties at a given output time, play an important role in shaping galaxy size. In addition, we directly measure size-based differential clustering in the TNG300 simulation and compare directly with the observational results. We find significant scale-dependent size-based differential clustering in TNG, in qualitative agreement with observations. However, correlations between $r_{\rm gal}/R_{\rm vir}$ and secondary halo properties are not the drivers of the differential clustering in the simulations; instead, we find that most of this signal in TNG arises from satellite galaxies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_03679
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The relationship between galaxy size and halo properties: Insights from the IllustrisTNG simulations and differential clustering
Somerville, Rachel S.
Gabrielpillai, Austen
Hadzhiyska, Boryana
Genel, Shy
Astrophysics of Galaxies
The physical origin of the radial sizes of galaxies and how galaxy sizes are correlated with the properties of their host dark matter halos is an open question in galaxy formation. In observations, the large-scale clustering of galaxies selected by stellar mass is significantly different for large and small galaxies, and Behroozi et al. (2022) showed that these results are in tension with some of the correlations between galaxy size and halo properties in the literature. We analyze the IllustrisTNG suite of large volume cosmological hydrodynamic simulations along with dark matter only simulations with matched initial conditions. We investigate correlations between the ratio of galaxy size to halo virial radius ($r_{\rm gal}/R_{\rm vir}$) and halo spin, concentration, and formation time at redshift 0-3. We find a significant correlation between $r_{\rm gal}/R_{\rm vir}$ and concentration, but only above a critical value $c \simeq 16$, and we also find a correlation between $r_{\rm gal}/R_{\rm vir}$ and halo formation time. We suggest that galaxy formation history and environment, in addition to halo properties at a given output time, play an important role in shaping galaxy size. In addition, we directly measure size-based differential clustering in the TNG300 simulation and compare directly with the observational results. We find significant scale-dependent size-based differential clustering in TNG, in qualitative agreement with observations. However, correlations between $r_{\rm gal}/R_{\rm vir}$ and secondary halo properties are not the drivers of the differential clustering in the simulations; instead, we find that most of this signal in TNG arises from satellite galaxies.
title The relationship between galaxy size and halo properties: Insights from the IllustrisTNG simulations and differential clustering
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.03679