A semi-analytical perspective on massive galaxies at $z\sim0.55$

The most massive and luminous galaxies in the Universe serve as powerful probes to study the formation of structure, the assembly of mass, and cosmology. However, their detailed formation and evolution is still barely understood. Here we extract a sample of massive mock galaxies from the semi-analytical model of galaxy formation (SAM) galacticus from the MultiDark-Galaxies by replicating the CMASS photometric selection from the SDSS-iii Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). The comparison of the galacticus CMASS-mock with BOSS-CMASS data allows us to explore different aspects of the massive galaxy population at 0.5 < z < 0.6, including the galaxy-halo connection and the galaxy clustering. We find good agreement between our modelled galaxies and observations regarding the galaxy-halo connection, but our CMASS-mock overestimates the clustering amplitude of the two-point correlation function due to a smaller number density compared to BOSS, a lack of blue objects, and a small intrinsic scatter in stellar mass at fixed halo mass of
DS, FP, ADMD, SRT, GF, and AAK want to thank the support of the Spanish Ministry grant AYA2014-60641-C2-1-P managed by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (IAA-CSIC). WC and AK are supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (MINECO/FEDER, UE) in Spain through grant AYA2015-63810-P. WC further acknowledges the supported by the European Research Council under grant number 670193. AK is also supported by the Spanish Red Consolider Multi-Dark FPA2017-90566-REDC. He further thanks Lance Jyo for dreamwalking. ADMD thanks Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP) for financial support. DS fellowship is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under the 2014 Severo Ochoa Predoctoral Training Programme.