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We present a complete census of candidate nuggets, i.e., dense galaxies likely formed by compaction with intense gas influx, within the volume-limited $z \sim 0$ REsolved Spectroscopy Of a Local VolumE (RESOLVE) survey. These nuggets span all evolutionary stages and 3 orders of magnitude in stellar mass ($M_{*} \sim 10^{8} M_\odot$ to $10^{11} M_\odot$) from the dwarf to the giant regime. We develop selection criteria for our $z\sim0$ nugget candidates based on structure and introduce the use of environmental criteria to eliminate nugget-like objects with suspected non-compaction origins. The resulting $z\sim0$ nuggets follow expectations with respect to structure (i.e., density, size), population frequency, and likely origins. We show that the properties of our nugget census are consistent with permanent quenching above the gas-richness threshold scale (halo mass $M_{halo} \sim 10^{11.4} M_\odot$), cyclic temporary quenching below the threshold scale, and feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) assisting in permanent quenching. As predicted in simulations, most nuggets quench within the halo mass range $M_{halo} \sim 10^{11.45} M_\odot$ to $10^{11.9} M_\odot$. We find $\sim 0.29$ dex scatter around the star-forming main sequence for candidate blue nuggets below the threshold scale, which is consistent with temporary quenching as seen in simulations. A transitional population of green nuggets appears above the threshold scale. AGN also become more common in nuggets above this scale, and we see a likely AGN excess in nuggets vs. comparably selected non-nuggets. Our results provide the first observational confirmation of the mass-dependent, AGN-mediated shift from cyclic quenching to halo quenching in nuggets., Comment: 18 pages, 14 figures

After more than five years of development, we present a new version of Dark Sage, a semi-analytic model (SAM) of galaxy formation that breaks the mould for models of its kind. Included among the major changes is an overhauled treatment of stellar feedback that is derived from energy conservation, operates on local scales, affects gas gradually over time rather than instantaneously, and predicts a mass-loading factor for every galaxy. Building on the model's resolved angular-momentum structure of galaxies, we now consider the heating of stellar discs, delivering predictions for disc structure both radially and vertically. We add a further dimension to stellar discs by tracking the distribution of stellar ages in each annulus. Each annulus--age bin has its own velocity dispersion and metallicity evolved in the model. This allows Dark Sage to make structural predictions for galaxies that previously only hydrodynamic simulations could. We present the model as run on the merger trees of the highest-resolution gravity-only simulation of the MillenniumTNG suite. Despite its additional complexity relative to other SAMs, Dark Sage only has three free parameters, the least of any SAM, which we calibrate exclusively against the cosmic star formation history and the $z=0$ stellar and HI mass functions using a particle-swarm optimisation method. The Dark Sage codebase, written in C and Python, is publicly available at https://github.com/arhstevens/DarkSage, Comment: Updates post referee's report. Get in touch for data access. 34 pages before references; 14 figures, 2 tables, 130 equations

In this letter, we explore the quiescent lives of central galaxies using the SAGE galaxy model and Uchuu dark matter simulation. We ask three questions: (1) How much of a galaxy's life is spent in quiescence? (2) How often do galaxies transition off the main sequence? (3) What is the typical duration of a quiescent phase? We find low and high-mass galaxies spend the highest fraction of their lives in quiescence: 45 \pm 19% for log10(Mstar) < 9.0 (3.68 \pm 1.80 Gyr) and 26 \pm 25% for log10(Mstar) > 11.5 (3.46 \pm 3.30 Gyr), falling to 7 \pm 13% for galaxies in-between (0.82 \pm 1.57 Gyr). Low mass galaxies move in and out of quiescence frequently, 2.8 \pm 1.3 times on average, though only for short periods, 1.49 \pm 1.04 Gyr. This can be traced to the influence of supernova feedback on their quite stochastic evolution. Galaxies of higher mass have fewer quiescent periods, ~0.7 \pm 0.9, and their length increases with mass, peaking at 1.97 \pm 2.27 Gyr. However, our high-mass population comprises star-forming and quiescent galaxies with diverging evolutionary paths, so the actual time may be even longer. These high-mass trends are driven by radio mode feedback from supermassive black holes, which, once active, tend to remain active for extended periods., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted to MNRAS Letters, open access version see https://doi.org/10.1093/mnrasl/slad031

We have developed a pipeline called \mentari to generate the far-ultraviolet to far-infrared spectral energy distribution (SED) of galaxies from the \dustysage semi-analytic galaxy formation model (SAM). \dustysage incorporates dust-related processes directly on top of the basic ingredients of galaxy formation like gas infall, cooling, star formation, feedback, and mergers. We derive a physically motivated attenuation model from the computed dust properties in \dustysage, so each galaxy has a self-consistent set of attenuation parameters based on the complicated dust physics that occurred across the galaxy's assembly history. Then, we explore several dust emission templates to produce infrared spectra. Our results show that a physically-motivated attenuation model is better for obtaining a consistent multi-wavelength description of galaxy formation and evolution, compared to using a constant attenuation. We compare our predictions with a compilation of observations and find that the fiducial model is in reasonable agreement with: (i) the observed $z=0$ luminosity functions from the far-ultraviolet to far-infrared simultaneously, and hence (ii) the local cosmic SED in the same range, (iii) the rest-frame K-band luminosity function across $0 < z < 3$, and (iv) the rest-frame far-ultraviolet luminosity function across $0 < z < 1$. Our model underproduces the far-ultraviolet emission at $z=2$ and $z=3$, which can be improved by altering the AGN feedback and dust processes in \dustysage. However, this combination thus worses the agreement at $z=0$, which suggests that more detailed treatment of such processes is required., Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

This paper represents an effort to provide robust constraints on the galaxy-halo connection and simultaneously test the Planck LCDM cosmology using a fully numerical model of small-scale galaxy clustering. We explore two extensions to the standard Halo Occupation Distribution model: assembly bias, whereby halo occupation depends on both halo mass and the larger environment, and velocity bias, whereby galaxy velocities do not perfectly trace the velocity of the dark matter within the halo. Moreover, we incorporate halo mass corrections to account for the impact of baryonic physics on the halo population. We identify an optimal set of clustering measurements to constrain this "decorated" HOD model for both low- and high-luminosity galaxies in SDSS DR7. We find that, for low-luminosity galaxies, a model with both assembly bias and velocity bias provides the best fit to the clustering measurements, with no tension remaining in the fit. In this model we find evidence for both central and satellite galaxy assembly bias at the 99% and 95% confidence levels, respectively. In addition, we find evidence for satellite galaxy velocity bias at the 99.9% confidence level. For high luminosity galaxies, we find no evidence for either assembly bias or velocity bias, but our model exhibits significant tension with SDSS measurements. We find that all of these conclusions still stand when we include the effects of baryonic physics on the halo mass function, suggesting that the tension we find for high luminosity galaxies may be due to a problem with our assumed cosmological model., Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures

Measurements of the luminosity function of active galactic nuclei (AGN) at high redshift ($z\gtrsim 6$) are expected to suffer from field-to-field variance, including cosmic and Poisson variances. Future surveys, such as those from the Euclid telescope and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will also be affected by field variance. We use the Uchuu simulation, a state-of-the-art cosmological $N$-body simulation with 2.1 trillion particles in a volume of $25.7~\mathrm{Gpc}^3$, combined with a semi-analytic galaxy and AGN formation model, to generate the Uchuu-$\nu^2$GC catalog, publicly available, that allows us to investigate the field-to-field variance of the luminosity function of AGN. With this Uchuu-$\nu^2$GC model, we quantify the cosmic variance as a function of survey area, AGN luminosity, and redshift. In general, cosmic variance decreases with increasing survey area and decreasing redshift. We find that at $z\sim6-7$, the cosmic variance depends weakly on AGN luminosity. This is because the typical mass of dark matter haloes in which AGN reside does not significantly depend on luminosity. Due to the rarity of AGN, Poisson variance dominates the total field-to-field variance, especially for bright AGN. We also examine the effect of parameters related to galaxy formation physics on the field variance. We discuss uncertainties present in the estimation of the faint-end of the AGN luminosity function from recent observations, and extend this to make predictions for the expected number of AGN and their variance for upcoming observations with Euclid, JWST, and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)., Comment: 18 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, Figs. 3, 4, 11, 13, and 14 revised, Figs. 14 and 16 in the original manuscript moved to the Appendix, All Uchuu-$\nu^2$GC data used in this paper are publicly available on our Skies & Universes website https://www.skiesanduniverses.org/Simulations/Uchuu/GalaxyCatalogues/

The Astropy Project supports and fosters the development of open-source and openly-developed Python packages that provide commonly needed functionality to the astronomical community. A key element of the Astropy Project is the core package $\texttt{astropy}$, which serves as the foundation for more specialized projects and packages. In this article, we summarize key features in the core package as of the recent major release, version 5.0, and provide major updates for the Project. We then discuss supporting a broader ecosystem of interoperable packages, including connections with several astronomical observatories and missions. We also revisit the future outlook of the Astropy Project and the current status of Learn Astropy. We conclude by raising and discussing the current and future challenges facing the Project., Comment: 43 pages, 5 figures. To appear in ApJ. The author list has two parts: the authors that made significant contributions to the writing and/or coordination of the paper, followed by maintainers of and contributors to the Astropy Project. The position in the author list does not correspond to contributions to the Astropy Project as a whole

Applying halo models to analyze the small-scale clustering of galaxies is a proven method for characterizing the connection between galaxies and their host halos. Such works are often plagued by systematic errors or are limited to clustering statistics which can be predicted analytically. In this work, we employ a numerical mock-based modeling procedure to examine the clustering of SDSS DR7 galaxies. We apply a standard halo occupation distribution (HOD) model to dark-matter-only simulations with a LCDM cosmology. To constrain the theoretical models, we utilize a combination of galaxy number density and selected scales of the projected correlation function, redshift-space correlation function, group multiplicity function, average group velocity dispersion, mark correlation function, and counts-in-cells statistics. We design an algorithm to choose an optimal combination of measurements that yields tight and accurate constraints on our model parameters. Compared to previous work using fewer clustering statistics, we find significant improvement in the constraints on all parameters of our halo model for two different luminosity-threshold galaxy samples. Most interestingly, we obtain unprecedented high-precision constraints on the scatter in the relationship between galaxy luminosity and halo mass. However, our best-fit model results in significant tension (>4 sigma) for both samples, indicating the need to add second-order features to the standard HOD model. To guarantee the robustness of these results, we perform an extensive analysis of the systematic and statistical errors in our modeling procedure, including a first-of-its-kind study of the sensitivity of our constraints to changes in the halo mass function due to baryonic physics., Comment: 36 pages, 17 figures, submitted to ApJ

We explore the relation between dust and several fundamental properties of simulated galaxies using the Dusty SAGE semi-analytic model. In addition to tracing the standard galaxy properties, Dusty SAGE also tracks cold dust mass in the interstellar medium (ISM), hot dust mass in the halo and dust mass ejected by feedback activity. Based on their ISM dust content, we divide our galaxies into two categories: ISM dust-poor and ISM dust-rich. We split the ISM dust-poor group into two subgroups: halo dust-rich and dust-poor (the latter contains galaxies that lack dust in both the ISM and halo). Halo dust-rich galaxies have high outflow rates of heated gas and dust and are more massive. We divide ISM dust-rich galaxies based on their specific star formation rate (sSFR) into star-forming and quenched subgroups. At redshift z=0, we find that ISM dust-rich galaxies have a relatively high sSFR, low bulge-to-total (BTT) mass ratio, and high gas metallicity. The high sSFR of ISM dust-rich galaxies allows them to produce dust in the stellar ejecta. Their metal-rich ISM enables dust growth via grain accretion. The opposite is seen in the ISM dust-poor group. Furthermore, ISM dust-rich galaxies are typically late-types, while ISM dust-poor galaxies resemble the early-type population, and we show how their ISM content evolves from being dust-rich to dust-poor. Finally, we investigate dust production from z=3 to z=0 and find that all groups evolve similarly, except for the quenched ISM dust-rich group., Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We measure the environmental dependence, where environment is defined by the distance to the third nearest neighbor, of multiple galaxy properties inside the Environmental COntext (ECO) catalog. We focus primarily on void galaxies, which we define as the $10 \%$ of galaxies having the lowest local density. We compare the properties of void and non-void galaxies: baryonic mass, color, fractional stellar mass growth rate (FSMGR), morphology, and gas-to-stellar-mass ratio (estimated from a combination of HI data and photometric gas fractions calibrated with the RESOLVE survey). Our void galaxies typically have lower baryonic masses than galaxies in denser environments, and they display the properties expected of a lower mass population: they have more late-types, are bluer, have higher FSMGR, and are more gas rich. We control for baryonic mass and investigate the extent to which void galaxies are different at fixed mass. Void galaxies are bluer, more gas-rich, and more star forming at fixed mass than non-void galaxies, which is a possible signature of galaxy assembly bias. Furthermore, we show that these trends persist even at fixed mass and morphology, and we find that voids host a distinct population of early-types that are bluer and more star-forming than the typical red and quenched early-types. In addition to these empirical observational results, we also present theoretical results from mock catalogs with built-in galaxy assembly bias. We show that a simple matching of galaxy properties to (sub)halo properties, such as mass and age, can recover the observed environmental trends in ECO galaxies., Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

The evolution of a dark matter halo in a dark matter only simulation is governed purely byNewtonian gravity, making a clean testbed to determine what halo properties drive its fate.Using machine learning, we predict the survival, mass loss, final position, and merging time of subhalos within a cosmological N-body simulation, focusing on what instantaneous initial features of the halo, interaction, and environment matter most. Survival is well predicted, with our model achieving 96.5% accuracy using only 3 model inputs from the initial interaction.However, the mass loss, final location, and merging times are much more stochastic processes, with significant margins of error between the true and predicted quantities for much of our sample. The redshift, impact angle, relative velocity, and the masses of the host and subhalo are the only relevant initial inputs for determining subhalo evolution. In general, subhalos that enter their hosts at a mid-range of redshifts (typically z = 0.67-0.43) are the most challenging to make predictions for, across all of our final outcomes. Subhalo orbits that come in more perpendicular to the host are also easier to predict, except for in the case of predicting disruption, where the opposite appears to be true. We conclude that the detailed evolution of individual subhalos within N-body simulations is quite difficult to predict, pointing to a stochasticity in the merging process. We discuss implications for both simulations and observations, Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures

We introduce the Uchuu suite of large high-resolution cosmological $N$-body simulations. The largest simulation, named Uchuu, consists of 2.1 trillion ($12800^3$) dark matter particles in a box of side-length 2.0 Gpc/h, with particle mass $3.27 \times 10^{8}$ Msun/h. The highest resolution simulation, Shin-Uchuu, consists of 262 billion ($6400^3$) particles in a box of side-length 140 Mpc/h, with particle mass $8.97 \times 10^{5}$ Msun/h. Combining these simulations we can follow the evolution of dark matter halos and subhalos spanning those hosting dwarf galaxies to massive galaxy clusters across an unprecedented volume. In this first paper, we present basic statistics, dark matter power spectra, and the halo and subhalo mass functions, which demonstrate the wide dynamic range and superb statistics of the Uchuu suite. From an analysis of the evolution of the power spectra we conclude that our simulations remain accurate from the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation scale down to the very small. We also provide parameters of a mass-concentration model, which describes the evolution of halo concentration and reproduces our simulation data to within 5 per cent for halos with masses spanning nearly eight orders of magnitude at redshift 00.5, whereas no upturn is detected at z<0.5. We make publicly available various $N$-body products as part of Uchuu Data Release 1 on the Skies & Universes site. Future releases will include gravitational lensing maps and mock galaxy, X-ray cluster, and active galactic nuclei catalogues., Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures, accepted by MNRAS. We release various $N$-body products as data release 1 on http://skiesanduniverses.org/ such as subsets of simulation particles, matter power spectra, halo/subhalo catalogues, and their merger trees

We build a theoretical picture of how the light from galaxies evolves across cosmic time. In particular, we predict the evolution of the galaxy spectral energy distribution (SED) by carefully integrating the star formation and metal enrichment histories of semi-analytic model (SAM) galaxies and combining these with stellar population synthesis models which we call mentari. Our SAM combines prescriptions to model the interplay between gas accretion, star formation, feedback process, and chemical enrichment in galaxy evolution. From this, the SED of any simulated galaxy at any point in its history can be constructed and compared with telescope data to reverse engineer the various physical processes that may have led to a particular set of observations. The synthetic SEDs of millions of simulated galaxies from mentari can cover wavelengths from the far UV to infrared, and thus can tell a near complete story of the history of galaxy evolution. \keywords{galaxies: evolution - galaxies: stellar content - galaxies.}, Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of IAU symposium #341: Challenges in Panchromatic Modelling with Next Generation Facilities

We study the dust evolution in galaxies by implementing a detailed dust prescription in the SAGE semi-analytical model for galaxy formation. The new model, called Dusty SAGE, follows the condensation of dust in the ejecta of type II supernovae and asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, grain growth in the dense molecular clouds, destruction by supernovae shocks, and the removal of dust from the ISM by star formation, reheating, inflows and outflows. Our model successfully reproduces the observed dust mass function at redshift z = 0 and the observed scaling relations for dust across a wide range of redshifts. We find that the dust mass content in the present Universe is mainly produced via grain growth in the interstellar medium (ISM). By contrast, in the early Universe, the primary production mechanism for dust is the condensation in stellar ejecta. The shift of the significant production channel for dust characterises the scaling relations of dust-to-gas (DTG) and dust-to-metal (DTM) ratios. In galaxies where the grain growth dominates, we find positive correlations for DTG and DTM ratios with both metallicity and stellar mass. On the other hand, in galaxies where dust is produced primarily via condensation, we find negative or no correlation for DTM and DTG ratios with either metallicity or stellar mass. In agreement with observation showing that the circumgalactic medium (CGM) contains more dust than the ISM, our model also shows the same trend for z < 4. Our semi-analytic model is publicly available at https: //github.com/dptriani/dusty-sage., Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

emcee is a Python library implementing a class of affine-invariant ensemble samplers for Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). This package has been widely applied to probabilistic modeling problems in astrophysics where it was originally published, with some applications in other fields. When it was first released in 2012, the interface implemented in emcee was fundamentally different from the MCMC libraries that were popular at the time, such as PyMC, because it was specifically designed to work with "black box" models instead of structured graphical models. This has been a popular interface for applications in astrophysics because it is often non-trivial to implement realistic physics within the modeling frameworks required by other libraries. Since emcee's release, other libraries have been developed with similar interfaces, such as dynesty (Speagle 2019). The version 3.0 release of emcee is the first major release of the library in about 6 years and it includes a full re-write of the computational backend, several commonly requested features, and a set of new "move" implementations., Comment: Published in the Journal for Open Source Software

Correlation functions are widely used in extra-galactic astrophysics to extract insights into how galaxies occupy dark matter halos and in cosmology to place stringent constraints on cosmological parameters. A correlation function fundamentally requires computing pair-wise separations between two sets of points and then computing a histogram of the separations. Corrfunc is an existing open-source, high-performance software package for efficiently computing a multitude of correlation functions. In this paper, we will discuss the SIMD AVX512F kernels within Corrfunc, capable of processing 16 floats or 8 doubles at a time. The latest manually implemented Corrfunc AVX512F kernels show a speedup of up to $\sim 4\times$ relative to compiler-generated code for double-precision calculations. The AVX512F kernels show $\sim 1.6\times$ speedup relative to the AVX kernels and compare favorably to a theoretical maximum of $2\times$. In addition, by pruning pairs with too large of a minimum possible separation, we achieve a $\sim 5-10\%$ speedup across all the SIMD kernels. Such speedups highlight the importance of programming explicitly with SIMD vector intrinsics for complex calculations that can not be efficiently vectorized by compilers. Corrfunc is publicly available at https://github.com/manodeep/Corrfunc/., Comment: Paper II for the Corrfunc software package, paper I is on arXiv here: arXiv:1911.03545. Appeared in the refereed proceedings for the "Second Workshop on Software Challenges to Exascale Computing"

The two-point correlation function (2PCF) is the most widely used tool for quantifying the spatial distribution of galaxies. Since the distribution of galaxies is determined by galaxy formation physics as well as the underlying cosmology, fitting an observed correlation function yields valuable insights into both. The calculation for a 2PCF involves computing pair-wise separations and consequently, the computing time scales quadratically with the number of galaxies. The next-generation galaxy surveys are slated to observe many millions of galaxies, and computing the 2PCF for such surveys would be prohibitively time-consuming. Additionally, modern modelling techniques require the 2PCF to be calculated thousands of times on simulated galaxy catalogues of {\em at least} equal size to the data and would be completely unfeasible for the next generation surveys. Thus, calculating the 2PCF forms a substantial bottleneck in improving our understanding of the fundamental physics of the universe, and we need high-performance software to compute the correlation function. In this paper, we present Corrfunc --- a suite of highly optimised, OpenMP parallel clustering codes. The improved performance of Corrfunc arises from both efficient algorithms as well as software design that suits the underlying hardware of modern CPUs. Corrfunc can compute a wide range of 2-D and 3-D correlation functions in either simulation (Cartesian) space or on-sky coordinates. Corrfunc runs efficiently in both single- and multi-threaded modes and can compute a typical 2-point projected correlation function ($w_p(r_p)$) for ~1 million galaxies within a few seconds on a single thread. Corrfunc is designed to be both user-friendly and fast and is publicly available at https://github.com/manodeep/Corrfunc., Comment: Accepted for publication to MNRAS

Fundamental coding and software development skills are increasingly necessary for success in nearly every aspect of astronomical and astrophysical research as large surveys and high resolution simulations become the norm. However, professional training in these skills is inaccessible or impractical for many members of our community. Students and professionals alike have been expected to acquire these skills on their own, apart from formal classroom curriculum or on-the-job training. Despite the recognized importance of these skills, there is little opportunity to develop them - even for interested researchers. To ensure a workforce capable of taking advantage of the computational resources and the large volumes of data coming in the next decade, we must identify and support ways to make software development training widely accessible to community members, regardless of affiliation or career level. To develop and sustain a technology capable astronomical and astrophysical workforce, we recommend that agencies make funding and other resources available in order to encourage, support and, in some cases, require progress on necessary training, infrastructure and policies. In this white paper, we focus on recommendations for how funding agencies can lead in the promotion of activities to support the astronomy and astrophysical workforce in the 2020s., Comment: Submitted as a ASTRO2020 Decadal Survey APC position paper. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1905.05116

Software is a critical part of modern research, and yet there are insufficient mechanisms in the scholarly ecosystem to acknowledge, cite, and measure the impact of research software. The majority of academic fields rely on a one-dimensional credit model whereby academic articles (and their associated citations) are the dominant factor in the success of a researcher's career. In the petabyte era of astronomical science, citing software and measuring its impact enables academia to retain and reward researchers that make significant software contributions. These highly skilled researchers must be retained to maximize the scientific return from petabyte-scale datasets. Evolving beyond the one-dimensional credit model requires overcoming several key challenges, including the current scholarly ecosystem and scientific culture issues. This white paper will present these challenges and suggest practical solutions for elevating the role of software as a product of the research enterprise., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1905.05116

We compute the bispectra of the 21cm signal during the Epoch of Reionization for three different reionization scenarios that are based on a dark matter N-body simulation combined with a self-consistent, semi-numerical model of galaxy evolution and reionization. Our reionization scenarios differ in their trends of ionizing escape fractions ($f_\mathrm{esc}$) with the underlying galaxy properties and cover the physically plausible range, i.e. $f_\mathrm{esc}$ effectively decreasing, being constant, or increasing with halo mass. We find the 21cm bispectrum to be sensitive to the resulting ionization topologies that significantly differ in their size distribution of ionized and neutral regions throughout reionization. From squeezed to stretched triangles, the 21cm bispectra features a change of sign from negative to positive values, with ionized and neutral regions representing below-average and above-average concentrations contributing negatively and positively, respectively. The position of the change of sign provides a tracer of the size distribution of the ionized and neutral regions, and allows us to identify three major regimes that the 21cm bispectrum undergoes during reionization. In particular the regime during the early stages of reionization, where the 21cm bispectrum tracks the peak of the size distribution of the ionized regions, provides exciting prospects for pinning down reionization with the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array., Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

One of the most important parameters in characterizing the Epoch of Reionization, the escape fraction of ionizing photons, $f_\mathrm{esc}$, remains unconstrained both observationally and theoretically. With recent work highlighting the impact of galaxy-scale feedback on the instantaneous value of $f_\mathrm{esc}$, it is important to develop a model in which reionization is self-consistently coupled to galaxy evolution. In this work, we present such a model and explore how physically motivated functional forms of $f_\mathrm{esc}$ affect the evolution of ionized hydrogen within the intergalactic medium. Using the $21$cm power spectrum evolution, we investigate the likelihood of observationally distinguishing between a constant $f_\mathrm{esc}$ and other models that depend upon different forms of galaxy feedback. We find that changing the underlying connection between $f_\mathrm{esc}$ and galaxy feedback drastically alters the large-scale $21$cm power. The upcoming Square Kilometre Array Low Frequency instrument possesses the sensitivity to differentiate between our models at a fixed optical depth, requiring only $200$ hours of integration time focused on redshifts $z = 7.5-8.5$. Generalizing these results to account for a varying optical depth will require multiple $800$ hour observations spanning redshifts $z = 7-10$. This presents an exciting opportunity to observationally constrain one of the most elusive parameters during the Epoch of Reionization., Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables

We have built PRISM, a "Probabilistic Regression Instrument for Simulating Models". PRISM uses the Bayes linear approach and history matching to construct an approximation ('emulator') of any given model, by combining limited model evaluations with advanced regression techniques, covariances and probability calculations. It is designed to easily facilitate and enhance existing Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods by restricting plausible regions and exploring parameter space efficiently. However, PRISM can additionally be used as a standalone alternative to MCMC for model analysis, providing insight into the behavior of complex scientific models. With PRISM, the time spent on evaluating a model is minimized, providing developers with an advanced model analysis for a fraction of the time required by more traditional methods. This paper provides an overview of the different techniques and algorithms that are used within PRISM. We demonstrate the advantage of using the Bayes linear approach over a full Bayesian analysis when analyzing complex models. Our results show how much information can be captured by PRISM and how one can combine it with MCMC methods to significantly speed up calibration processes (>15 times faster). PRISM is an open-source Python package that is available under the BSD 3-Clause License (BSD-3) at https://github.com/1313e/PRISM and hosted at https://prism-tool.readthedocs.io. PRISM has also been reviewed by "The Journal of Open Source Software" (https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01229)., Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures, 1 table. Updated to reflect some changes made to published version

We investigate the role of angular momentum in the clustering of dark matter haloes. We make use of data from two high-resolution N-body simulations spanning over four orders of magnitude in halo mass, from $10^{9.8}$ to $10^{14}\ h^{-1}\ \text{M}_\odot$. We explore the hypothesis that mass accretion in filamentary environments alters the angular momentum of a halo, thereby driving a correlation between the spin parameter $\lambda$ and the strength of clustering. However, we do not find evidence that the distribution of matter on large scales is related to the spin of haloes. We find that a halo's spin is correlated with its age, concentration, sphericity, and mass accretion rate. Removing these correlations strongly affects the strength of secondary spin bias at low halo masses. We also find that high spin haloes are slightly more likely to be found near another halo of comparable mass. These haloes that are found near a comparable mass neighbour - a \textit{twin} - are strongly spatially biased. We demonstrate that this \textit{twin bias}, along with the relationship between spin and mass accretion rates, statistically accounts for halo spin secondary bias., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures; submitted to MNRAS, comments welcome

We introduce the THE THREE HUNDRED project, an endeavour to model 324 large galaxy clusters with full-physics hydrodynamical re-simulations. Here we present the data set and study the differences to observations for fundamental galaxy cluster properties and scaling relations. We find that the modelled galaxy clusters are generally in reasonable agreement with observations with respect to baryonic fractions and gas scaling relations at redshift z = 0. However, there are still some (model-dependent) differences, such as central galaxies being too massive, and galaxy colours (g - r) being bluer (about 0.2 dex lower at the peak position) than in observations. The agreement in gas scaling relations down to 10^{13} h^{-1} M_{\odot} between the simulations indicates that particulars of the sub-grid modelling of the baryonic physics only has a weak influence on these relations. We also include - where appropriate - a comparison to three semi-analytical galaxy formation models as applied to the same underlying dark-matter-only simulation. All simulations and derived data products are publicly available., Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 7 tables. MNRAS published version

The exact role of quasars during the Epoch of Reionization remains uncertain. With consensus leaning towards quasars producing a negligible amount of ionizing photons, we pose an alternate question: Can quasars indirectly contribute to reionization by allowing ionizing photons from stars to escape more easily? Using the Semi-Analytic Galaxy Evolution model to evolve a galaxy population through cosmic time, we construct an idealized scenario in which the escape fraction of stellar ionizing photons ($f_\mathrm{esc}$) is boosted following quasar wind events, potentially for several dynamical times. We find that under this scenario, the mean value of $f_\mathrm{esc}$ as a function of galaxy stellar mass peaks for intermediate mass galaxies. This mass dependence will have consequences for the 21cm power spectrum, enhancing power at small scales and suppressing it at large scales. This hints that whilst quasars may not directly contribute to the ionizing photon budget, they could influence reionization indirectly by altering the topology of ionized regions., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We explore the connection between the atomic gas fraction, f_atm, and `global disc stability' parameter, q, of galaxies within a fully cosmological context by examining galaxies in the Dark Sage semi-analytic model. The q parameter is determined by the ratio of disc specific angular momentum to mass. Dark Sage is well suited to our study, as it includes the numerical evolution of one-dimensional disc structure, making both j_disc and q predicted quantities. We show that Dark Sage produces a clear correlation between gas fraction and j_disc at fixed disc mass, in line with recent results from observations and hydrodynamic simulations. This translates to a tight q--f_atm sequence for star-forming central galaxies, which closely tracks the analytic prediction of Obreschkow et al. The scatter in this sequence is driven by the probability distribution function of mass as a function of j (PDF of j) within discs, specifically where it peaks. We find that halo mass is primarily responsible for the peak location of the PDF of j, at least for low values of q. Two main mechanisms of equal significance are then identified for disconnecting f_atm from q. Mergers in the model can trigger quasar winds, with the potential to blow out most of the gas disc, while leaving the stellar disc relatively unharmed. Ram-pressure stripping of satellite galaxies has a similar effect, where f_atm can drop drastically with only a minimal effect to q. We highlight challenges associated with following these predictions up with observations., Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures (excluding references and appendices). Submitted to MNRAS. Revisions after referee's report

Standard present day large-scale structure (LSS) analyses make a major assumption in their Bayesian parameter inference --- that the likelihood has a Gaussian form. For summary statistics currently used in LSS, this assumption, even if the underlying density field is Gaussian, cannot be correct in detail. We investigate the impact of this assumption on two recent LSS analyses: the Beutler et al. (2017) power spectrum multipole ($P_\ell$) analysis and the Sinha et al. (2017) group multiplicity function ($\zeta$) analysis. Using non-parametric divergence estimators on mock catalogs originally constructed for covariance matrix estimation, we identify significant non-Gaussianity in both the $P_\ell$ and $\zeta$ likelihoods. We then use Gaussian mixture density estimation and Independent Component Analysis on the same mocks to construct likelihood estimates that approximate the true likelihood better than the Gaussian $pseudo$-likelihood. Using these likelihood estimates, we accurately estimate the true posterior probability distribution of the Beutler et al. (2017) and Sinha et al. (2017) parameters. Likelihood non-Gaussianity shifts the $f\sigma_8$ constraint by $-0.44\sigma$, but otherwise, does not significantly impact the overall parameter constraints of Beutler et al. (2017). For the $\zeta$ analysis, using the pseudo-likelihood significantly underestimates the uncertainties and biases the constraints of Sinha et al. (2017) halo occupation parameters. For $\log M_1$ and $\alpha$, the posteriors are shifted by $+0.43\sigma$ and $-0.51\sigma$ and broadened by $42\%$ and $66\%$, respectively. The divergence and likelihood estimation methods we present provide a straightforward framework for quantifying the impact of likelihood non-Gaussianity and deriving more accurate parameter constraints., Comment: 33 pages, 7 figures

Galactic conformity is the phenomenon whereby galaxy properties exhibit excess correlations across distance than that expected if these properties only depended on halo mass. We perform a comprehensive study of conformity at low redshift using a galaxy group catalogue from the SDSS DR7 spectroscopic sample. We study correlations both between central galaxies and their satellites (1-halo), and between central galaxies in separate haloes (2-halo). We use the quenched fractions and the marked correlation function (MCF), to probe for conformity in three galaxy properties, $(g-r)$ colour, specific star formation rate (sSFR), and morphology. We assess the statistical significance of conformity signals with a suite of mock galaxy catalogues that have no built-in conformity, but contain the same group-finding and mass assignment errors as the real data. In the case of 1-halo conformity, quenched fractions show strong signals at all group masses. However, these signals are equally strong in mock catalogues, indicating that the conformity signal is spurious and likely entirely caused by group-finding systematics, calling into question previous claims of 1-halo conformity detection. The MCF reveals a significant detection of radial segregation within massive groups, but no evidence of conformity. In the case of 2-halo conformity, quenched fractions show no significant evidence of conformity in colour or sSFR once compared with mock catalogues, but a clear signal using morphology. In contrast, the MCF reveals a small, yet highly significant signal for all three properties in low mass groups and scales of $0.8-4\ h^{-1}\textrm{Mpc}$, possibly representing the first robust detection of 2-halo conformity., Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, accepted by MNRAS

We present the public release of the MultiDark-Galaxies: three distinct galaxy catalogues derived from one of the Planck cosmology MultiDark simulations (i.e. MDPL2, with a volume of (1 Gpc/$h$)$^{3}$ and mass resolution of $1.5 \times 10^{9} M_{\odot}/h$) by applying the semi-analytic models GALACTICUS, SAG, and SAGE to it. We compare the three models and their conformity with observational data for a selection of fundamental properties of galaxies like stellar mass function, star formation rate, cold gas fractions, and metallicities - noting that they sometimes perform differently reflecting model designs and calibrations. We have further selected galaxy subsamples of the catalogues by number densities in stellar mass, cold gas mass, and star formation rate in order to study the clustering statistics of galaxies. We show that despite different treatment of orphan galaxies, i.e. galaxies that lost their dark-matter host halo due to the finite mass resolution of the N-body simulation or tidal stripping, the clustering signal is comparable, and reproduces the observations in all three models - in particular when selecting samples based upon stellar mass. Our catalogues provide a powerful tool to study galaxy formation within a volume comparable to those probed by on-going and future photometric and redshift surveys. All model data consisting of a range of galaxy properties - including broad-band SDSS magnitudes - are publicly available., Comment: 29 pages, 16 figures, 8 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS. All data incl. the complete galaxy catalogues for all models are publicly available from the CosmoSim database (http://www.cosmosim.org); a selected set of galaxy properties is available via the Skies & Universes website (http://www.skiesanduniverses.org)

We explore the phenomenon commonly known as halo assembly bias, whereby dark matter halos of the same mass are found to be more or less clustered when a second halo property is considered, for halos in the mass range $3.7 \times 10^{11} \; h^{-1} \mathrm{M_{\odot}} - 5.0 \times 10^{13} \; h^{-1} \mathrm{M_{\odot}}$. Using the Large Suite of Dark Matter Simulations (LasDamas) we consider nine commonly used halo properties and find that a clustering bias exists if halos are binned by mass or by any other halo property. This secondary bias implies that no single halo property encompasses all the spatial clustering information of the halo population. The mean values of some halo properties depend on their halo's distance to a more massive neighbor. Halo samples selected by having high values of one of these properties therefore inherit a neighbor bias such that they are much more likely to be close to a much more massive neighbor. This neighbor bias largely accounts for the secondary bias seen in halos binned by mass and split by concentration or age. However, halos binned by other mass-like properties still show a secondary bias even when the neighbor bias is removed. The secondary bias of halos selected by their spin behaves differently than that for other halo properties, suggesting that the origin of the spin bias is different than of other secondary biases., Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX; minor revisions, and added references; results unchanged

Interpreting the small-scale clustering of galaxies with halo models can elucidate the connection between galaxies and dark matter halos. Unfortunately, the modelling is typically not sufficiently accurate for ruling out models statistically. It is thus difficult to use the information encoded in small scales to test cosmological models or probe subtle features of the galaxy-halo connection. In this paper, we attempt to push halo modelling into the "accurate" regime with a fully numerical mock-based methodology and careful treatment of statistical and systematic errors. With our forward-modelling approach, we can incorporate clustering statistics beyond the traditional two-point statistics. We use this modelling methodology to test the standard $\Lambda\mathrm{CDM}$ + halo model against the clustering of SDSS DR7 galaxies. Specifically, we use the projected correlation function, group multiplicity function and galaxy number density as constraints. We find that while the model fits each statistic separately, it struggles to fit them simultaneously. Adding group statistics leads to a more stringent test of the model and significantly tighter constraints on model parameters. We explore the impact of varying the adopted halo definition and cosmological model and find that changing the cosmology makes a significant difference. The most successful model we tried (Planck cosmology with Mvir halos) matches the clustering of low luminosity galaxies, but exhibits a 2.3$\sigma$ tension with the clustering of luminous galaxies, thus providing evidence that the "standard" halo model needs to be extended. This work opens the door to adding interesting freedom to the halo model and including additional clustering statistics as constraints., Comment: Replaced to match the published version

The Astropy Project (http://astropy.org) is, in its own words, "a community effort to develop a single core package for Astronomy in Python and foster interoperability between Python astronomy packages." For five years this project has been managed, written, and operated as a grassroots, self-organized, almost entirely volunteer effort while the software is used by the majority of the astronomical community. Despite this, the project has always been and remains to this day effectively unfunded. Further, contributors receive little or no formal recognition for creating and supporting what is now critical software. This paper explores the problem in detail, outlines possible solutions to correct this, and presents a few suggestions on how to address the sustainability of general purpose astronomical software.

Recent observations of AGN activity in massive galaxies (log Mstar / Msun > 10.4) show that: 1) at z < 1, AGN-hosting galaxies do not show enhanced merger signatures compared to normal galaxies, 2) also at z < 1, most AGNs are hosted by quiescent galaxies; and 3) at z > 1, percentage of AGNs in star forming galaxies increases and becomes comparable to AGN percentage in quiescent galaxies at z ~ 2. How can major mergers explain AGN activity in massive quiescent galaxies which have no merger features and no star formation to indicate recent galaxy merger? By matching merger events in a cosmological N-body simulation to the observed AGN incidence probability in the COSMOS survey, we show that major merger triggered AGN activity is consistent with the observations. By distinguishing between "peak" AGNs (recently merger triggered and hosted by star forming galaxies) and "faded" AGNs (merger triggered a long time ago and now residing in quiescent galaxies), we show that the AGN occupation fraction in star forming and quiescent galaxies simply follows the evolution of the galaxy merger rate. Since the galaxy merger rate drops dramatically at z < 1, the only AGNs left to be observed are the ones triggered by old mergers and are now in the declining phase of their nuclear activity, hosted by quiescent galaxies. As we go toward higher redshifts the galaxy merger rate increases and the percentages of "peak" AGNs and "faded" AGNs become comparable., Comment: accepted by MNRAS

We present the first stable release of Halotools (v0.2), a community-driven Python package designed to build and test models of the galaxy-halo connection. Halotools provides a modular platform for creating mock universes of galaxies starting from a catalog of dark matter halos obtained from a cosmological simulation. The package supports many of the common forms used to describe galaxy-halo models: the halo occupation distribution (HOD), the conditional luminosity function (CLF), abundance matching, and alternatives to these models that include effects such as environmental quenching or variable galaxy assembly bias. Satellite galaxies can be modeled to live in subhalos, or to follow custom number density profiles within their halos, including spatial and/or velocity bias with respect to the dark matter profile. The package has an optimized toolkit to make mock observations on a synthetic galaxy population, including galaxy clustering, galaxy-galaxy lensing, galaxy group identification, RSD multipoles, void statistics, pairwise velocities and others, allowing direct comparison to observations. Halotools is object-oriented, enabling complex models to be built from a set of simple, interchangeable components, including those of your own creation. Halotools has an automated testing suite and is exhaustively documented on http://halotools.readthedocs.io, which includes quickstart guides, source code notes and a large collection of tutorials. The documentation is effectively an online textbook on how to build and study empirical models of galaxy formation with Python., Comment: Revisions match version accepted for publication in AAS

We use subhalo abundance matching (SHAM) to model the stellar mass function (SMF) and clustering of the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) "CMASS" sample at $z\sim0.5$. We introduce a novel method which accounts for the stellar mass incompleteness of CMASS as a function of redshift, and produce CMASS mock catalogs which include selection effects, reproduce the overall SMF, the projected two-point correlation function $w_{\rm p}$, the CMASS $dn/dz$, and are made publicly available. We study the effects of assembly bias above collapse mass in the context of "age matching" and show that these effects are markedly different compared to the ones explored by Hearin et al. (2013) at lower stellar masses. We construct two models, one in which galaxy color is stochastic ("AbM" model) as well as a model which contains assembly bias effects ("AgM" model). By confronting the redshift dependent clustering of CMASS with the predictions from our model, we argue that that galaxy colors are not a stochastic process in high-mass halos. Our results suggest that the colors of galaxies in high-mass halos are determined by other halo properties besides halo peak velocity and that assembly bias effects play an important role in determining the clustering properties of this sample., Comment: 22 pages. Appendix. B added. Matches the version accepted by MNRAS. Mock galaxy catalog and HOD table are available at http://www.massivegalaxies.com

In the second paper of this series, we present results from cosmological simulations on the demographics of flyby interactions to gauge their potential impact on galaxy evolution. In a previous paper, we demonstrated that flybys -- an interaction where two independent halos inter-penetrate but detach at a later time and do not merge -- occur much more frequently than previously believed. In particular, we found that the frequency of flybys increases at low redshift and is comparable to or even greater than the frequency of mergers for halos $\gtrsim 10^{11} M_\odot/h$. In this paper, we classify flybys according to their orbits and the level of perturbation exacted on both the halos involved. We find that the majority of flybys penetrate deeper than $\sim R_{half}$ of the primary and have an initial relative speed $\sim 1.6\times V_{vir}$ of the primary. The typical flyby mass-ratio is $\sim 0.1$ at high $z$ for all halos, while at low $z$, massive primary halos undergo flybys with small secondary halos. We estimate the perturbation from the flyby on both the primary and the secondary and find that a typical flyby is mostly non-perturbative for the primary halo. However, since a massive primary experiences so many flybys at any given time, they are nearly continually a victim of a perturbative event. In particular, we find flybys that cause $\sim 1\%$ change in the binding energy of a primary halo occurs $\gtrsim 1 $ Gyr$^{-1}$ for halos $> 10^{10} M_\odot/h$ for $z \lesssim 4$. Secondary halos, on the other hand, are highly perturbed by the typical encounter, experiencing a change in binding energy of nearly order unity. Our results imply that flybys can drive a significant part of galaxy transformation at moderate to lower redshifts ($z \lesssim 4$). We touch on implications for observational surveys, mass-to-light ratios, and galaxy assembly bias., Comment: Figure 5 and Figure 7 show the two key results of the paper. Submitted to ApJ, comments are welcome

We present and test TesseRACt, a non-parametric technique for recovering the concentration of simulated dark matter halos using Voronoi tessellation. TesseRACt is tested on idealized N-body halos that are axisymmetric, triaxial, and contain substructure and compared to traditional least-squares fitting as well as two non-parametric techniques that assume spherical symmetry. TesseRACt recovers halo concentrations within 0.3% of the true value regardless of whether the halo is spherical, axisymmetric, or triaxial. Traditional fitting and non-parametric techniques that assume spherical symmetry can return concentrations that are systematically off by as much as 10% from the true value for non-spherical halos. TesseRACt also performs significantly better when there is substructure present outside $0.5R_{200}$. Given that cosmological halos are rarely spherical and often contain substructure, we discuss implications for studies of halo concentration in cosmological N-body simulations including how choice of technique for measuring concentration might bias scaling relations., Comment: 8 figures, submitted to ApJ

We study the structure and evolution of dark matter halos from z = 300 to z = 6 for two cosmological N-body simulation initialization techniques. While the second order Lagrangian perturbation theory (2LPT) and the Zel'dovich approximation (ZA) both produce accurate present day halo mass functions, earlier collapse of dense regions in 2LPT can result in larger mass halos at high redshift. We explore the differences in dark matter halo mass and concentration due to initialization method through three 2LPT and three ZA initialized cosmological simulations. We find that 2LPT induces more rapid halo growth, resulting in more massive halos compared to ZA. This effect is most pronounced for high mass halos and at high redshift. Halo concentration is, on average, largely similar between 2LPT and ZA, but retains differences when viewed as a function of halo mass. For both mass and concentration, the difference between typical individual halos can be very large, highlighting the shortcomings of ZA-initialized simulations for high-z halo population studies., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, submitted to ApJ

Recently, both simulations and observations have revealed that flybys - fast, one-time interactions between two galaxy halos - are surprisingly common, nearing/comparable to galaxy mergers. Since these are rapid, transient events with the closest approach well outside the galaxy disk, it is unclear if flybys can transform the galaxy in a lasting way. We conduct collisionless N-body simulations of three co-planer flyby interactions between pure-disk galaxies to take a first look at the effects flybys have on disk structure, with particular focus on stellar bar formation. We find that some flybys are capable of inciting a bar with bars forming in both galaxies during our 1:1 interaction and in the secondary during our 10:1 interaction. The bars formed have ellipticities >0.5, sizes on the order of the host disk's scale length, and persist to the end of our simulations, ~5 Gyr after pericenter. The ability of flybys to incite bar formation implies that many processes associated with secular bar evolution may be more closely tied with interactions than previously though., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, submitted to ApJ Letters

Hierarchical structure formation theory is based on the notion that mergers drive galaxy evolution, so a considerable framework of semi-analytic models and N-body simulations has been constructed to calculate how mergers transform a growing galaxy. However, galaxy mergers are only one type of major dynamical interaction between halos -- another class of encounter, a close flyby, has been largely ignored. We analyze a 50 Mpc/h, $1024^3$ collisionless cosmological simulation and find that the number of close flyby interactions is comparable to, or even surpasses, the number of mergers for halo masses $\ga 10^{11}\,{h^{-1} M_\odot}$ at $z \la 2$. Halo flybys occur so frequently to high mass halos that they are continually perturbed, unable to reach a dynamical equilibrium. We also find tentative evidence that at high redshift, $z \ga 14$, flybys are as frequent as mergers. Our results suggest that close halo flybys can play an important role in the evolution of the earliest dark matter halos and their galaxies, and can still influence galaxy evolution at the present epoch., Comment: Proceedings for "Second Workshop on Numerical and Observational Astrophysics: From the First Structures to the Universe Today, 2011"; ed: M. E. De Rossi, S. E. Pedrosa and L. J. Pelizza. Accompanying paper is here: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012ApJ...751...17S

We explore structure formation in the dark ages ($z\sim 30-6$) using two well-known methods for initializing cosmological $N$-body simulations. Overall, both the Zel'dovich approximation (\za) and second order Lagrangian perturbation theory (\lpt) are known to produce accurate present-day dark matter halo mass functions. However, since the \lpt method drives more rapid evolution of dense regions, it increases the occurrence of rare massive objects -- an effect that is most pronounced at high redshift. We find that \lpt produces more halos that could harbor Population III stars and their black hole remnants, and they produce them earlier. Although the differences between the \lpt and \za mass functions are nearly erased by $z=6$, this small boost to the number and mass of black holes more than doubles the reionized volume of the early Universe. We discuss the implications for reionization and massive black hole growth., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures (one nifty one). Accepted to ApJ Letters. Comments welcome

We present a comparative study of recent works on merger-timescales with dynamical friction and find a strong contrast between idealized/isolated mergers (Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2008) and mergers from a cosmological volume (Jiang et al. 2008). Our study measures the duration of mergers in a cosmological N-body simulation of dark matter, with emphasis on higher redshifts (z < 10) and a lower mass range. In our analysis we consider and compare two merger definitions; tidal disruption and coalescence. We find that the merger-time formula proposed by Jiang et al. (2008) describes our results well and conclude that cosmologically motivated merger-time formulae provide a more versatile and statistically robust approximation for practical applications such as semi-analytic/hybrid models., Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Observations of the Galactic Center (GC) have accumulated a multitude of "forensic" evidence indicating that several million years ago the center of the Milky Way galaxy was teaming with starforming and accretion-powered activity -- this paints a rather different picture from the GC as we understand it today. We examine a possibility that this epoch of activity could have been triggered by the infall of a satellite galaxy into the Milky Way which began at the redshift of 10 and ended few million years ago with a merger of the Galactic supermassive black hole with an intermediate mass black hole brought in by the inspiralling satellite., Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure, accepted by MNRAS. Comments are welcome

Hierarchical structure formation theory is based on the notion that mergers drive galaxy evolution, so a considerable framework of semi-analytic models and N-body simulations has been constructed to calculate how mergers transform a growing galaxy. However, galaxy mergers are only one type of major dynamical interaction between halos -- another class of encounter, a close flyby, has been largely ignored. We use cosmological N-body simulations to reconstruct the entire dynamical interaction history of dark matter halos. We present a careful method of identifying and tracking a dark matter halo which resolves the typical classes of anomalies that occur in N-body data. This technique allows us to robustly follow halos and several hierarchical levels of subhalos as they grow, dissolve, merge, and flyby one another -- thereby constructing both a census of the dynamical interactions in a volume and an archive of the dynamical evolution of an individual halo. In addition to a census of mergers, our tool characterizes the frequency of close flyby interactions in the Universe. We find that the number of close flyby interactions is comparable to, or even surpasses, the number of mergers for halo masses $\gtrsim 10^{11}\,\Msun$ at $z \lesssim 2$. Halo flybys occur so frequently to high mass halos that they are continually perturbed, unable to reach a dynamical equilibrium. In particular, we find that Milky Way type halos undergo a similar number of flybys as mergers irrespective of mass-ratio for $z\lesssim 2$. We also find tentative evidence that at high redshift, $z \gtrsim 14$, flybys are as frequent as mergers. Our results suggest that close halo flybys can play an important role in the evolution of the earliest dark matter halos and their galaxies, and can still influence galaxy evolution at the present epoch. [Abridged], Comment: Replaced to match version accepted to ApJ. Figure resolution degraded for arXiv limits, full resolution paper available at http://astro.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~sinham/research.html

Observations indicate that roughly 60% of the baryons may exist in a Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM) at low redshifts. Following up on previous results showing that gas is released through galaxy mergers, we use a semi-analytic technique to estimate the fraction of gas mass lost from haloes solely due to mergers. We find that up to ~25% of the gas in a halo can unbind over the course of galaxy assembly. This process does not act preferentially on smaller mass haloes; bigger haloes \emph{always} release larger amounts of gas in a given volume of the Universe. However, if we include multi-phase gas accretion onto haloes, we find that only a few percent is unbound. We conclude that either non-gravitational processes may be in play to heat up the gas in the galaxies prior to unbinding by mergers or most of the baryons in the WHIM have never fallen into virialised dark matter haloes. We present a budget for stocking the WHIM compiled from recent work., Comment: Accepted for publication by MNRAS Letters

Galaxy merger simulations have explored the behaviour of gas within the galactic disk, yet the dynamics of hot gas within the galaxy halo has been neglected. We report on the results of high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations of colliding galaxies with hot halo gas. We explore a range of mass ratios, gas fractions and orbital configurations to constrain the shocks and gas dynamics within the progenitor haloes. We find that : (i) A strong shock is produced in the galaxy haloes before the first passage, increasing the temperature of the gas by almost an order of magnitude to $T\sim 10^{6.3}$ K. (ii) The X-ray luminosity of the shock is strongly dependent on the gas fraction; it is $\gtrsim 10^{39}$ erg/s for halo gas fractions larger than 10%. (iii) The hot diffuse gas in the simulation produces X-ray luminosities as large as $10^{42}$ erg/s. This contributes to the total X-ray background in the Universe. (iv) We find an analytic fit to the maximum X-ray luminosity of the shock as a function of merger parameters. This fit can be used in semi-analytic recipes of galaxy formation to estimate the total X-ray emission from shocks in merging galaxies. (v) $\sim$ 10-20% of the initial gas mass is unbound from the galaxies for equal-mass mergers, while $3-5%$ of the gas mass is released for the 3:1 and 10:1 mergers. This unbound gas ends up far from the galaxy and can be a feasible mechanism to enrich the IGM with metals., Comment: Submitted to MNRAS. Paper with high-resolution images and associated movies available at http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~manodeep.sinha/research.html