Galaxies as stochastic systems: why the next breakthrough in galaxy evolution requires one hundred million spectra
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| Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866912772540858368 |
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| author | Tacchella, Sandro Belokurov, Vasily Bevins, Harry T. J. Maiolino, Roberto Peiris, Hiranya V. Pozzetti, Lucia Sargent, Mark T. |
| author_facet | Tacchella, Sandro Belokurov, Vasily Bevins, Harry T. J. Maiolino, Roberto Peiris, Hiranya V. Pozzetti, Lucia Sargent, Mark T. |
| contents | Each galaxy is observed only once along its life, making galaxy evolution fundamentally an inverse statistical problem: time-dependent physics must be inferred from ensembles of single-epoch snapshots. To move beyond descriptive scaling relations toward physical regulation mechanisms of star formation, quenching, chemical enrichment and black hole growth, galaxies must be treated as realizations of a stochastic process whose hyper-parameters (e.g., correlation timescales, burstiness, duty cycles) are inferred hierarchically. This demands both depth and scale: continuum S/N sufficient for absorption-line ages and chemistry, and samples far larger than those in SDSS, DESI, 4MOST or MOONS, which provide either depth or size but not both across $0<z<3$. Once the relevant axes of mass, redshift, environment, structure and evolutionary phase are populated, the requirement naturally rises from $10^7$ to $\sim10^8$ galaxies. This is the regime where stochastic hyper-parameters can be well constrained and where comparisons to simulations and cosmological forward models become limited by theory rather than observations. We outline the science enabled by such a programme and the corresponding requirements for a future ESO wide-field spectroscopic facility capable of delivering tens to hundreds of millions of rest-UV-optical spectra over $0\lesssim z\lesssim3$. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_15841 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Galaxies as stochastic systems: why the next breakthrough in galaxy evolution requires one hundred million spectra Tacchella, Sandro Belokurov, Vasily Bevins, Harry T. J. Maiolino, Roberto Peiris, Hiranya V. Pozzetti, Lucia Sargent, Mark T. Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies Each galaxy is observed only once along its life, making galaxy evolution fundamentally an inverse statistical problem: time-dependent physics must be inferred from ensembles of single-epoch snapshots. To move beyond descriptive scaling relations toward physical regulation mechanisms of star formation, quenching, chemical enrichment and black hole growth, galaxies must be treated as realizations of a stochastic process whose hyper-parameters (e.g., correlation timescales, burstiness, duty cycles) are inferred hierarchically. This demands both depth and scale: continuum S/N sufficient for absorption-line ages and chemistry, and samples far larger than those in SDSS, DESI, 4MOST or MOONS, which provide either depth or size but not both across $0<z<3$. Once the relevant axes of mass, redshift, environment, structure and evolutionary phase are populated, the requirement naturally rises from $10^7$ to $\sim10^8$ galaxies. This is the regime where stochastic hyper-parameters can be well constrained and where comparisons to simulations and cosmological forward models become limited by theory rather than observations. We outline the science enabled by such a programme and the corresponding requirements for a future ESO wide-field spectroscopic facility capable of delivering tens to hundreds of millions of rest-UV-optical spectra over $0\lesssim z\lesssim3$. |
| title | Galaxies as stochastic systems: why the next breakthrough in galaxy evolution requires one hundred million spectra |
| topic | Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.15841 |