A Study of Three Galaxy Types, Galaxy Formation, and Warm Dark Matter

We try to bridge the gap between the theory of linear density-velocity-gravitational perturbations in the early universe, and the relaxed galaxies we observe today. We succeed quantitatively for dark matter if dark matter is warm. The density runs of baryons and of dark matter of relaxed galaxies are well described by hydro-static equations. The evolution from initial linear perturbations to final relaxed galaxies is well described by hydro-dynamical equations. These equations necessarily include dark matter velocity dispersion. If the initial perturbation is large enough, the halo becomes self-gravitating. The adiabatic compression of the dark matter core determines the final core density, and provides a negative stabilizing feedback. The relaxed galaxy halo may form adiabatically if dark matter is warm. The galaxy halo radius continues to increase indefinitely, so has an ill-defined mass.

The current status of galaxy formation

Understanding galaxy formation is one of the most pressing issues in cos- mology. We review the current status of galaxy formation from both an observational and a theoretical perspective, and summarize the prospects for future advances.

Semi-numerical simulation of reionization with semi-analytical modeling of galaxy formation

In a semi-numerical model of reionization, the evolution of ionization fraction is approximately simulated by the criterion of ionizing photon to baryon ratio. We incorporate a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation based on the Millennium II N-body simulation into the semi-numerical modeling of reionization. The semianalytical model is used to predict the production of ionizing photons, then we use the semi-numerical method to model the reionization process. Such an approach allows more detailed modeling of the reionization, and also connects observations of galaxies at low and high redshifts to the reionization history. The galaxy formation model we use was designed to match the low-z observations, and it also fits the high redshift luminosity function reasonably well, but its prediction about star formation falls below the observed value, and we find that it also underpredicts the stellar ionizing photon production rate, hence the reionization cannot be completed at z ~ 6. We also consider simple modifications of the model with more top heavy initial mass functions, which can allow the reionization to occur at earlier epochs. The incorporation of the semi-analytical model may also affect the topology of the HI regions during the epoch of reionization, and the neutral regions produced by our simulations with the semi-analytical model, which appeared less poriferous than the simple halo-based models.

What is the right way to quench star formation in semi-analytic models of galaxy formation?

Semi-analytic models of galaxy formation are powerful tools to study the evolution of a galaxy population in a cosmological context. However, most models overpredict the number of low- mass galaxies at high redshifts and the colors of model galaxies are not right in the sense that low-mass satellite galaxies are too red and centrals are too blue. The recent version of the L-Galaxies model by Henriques et al. （H15） is a step forward to solve these problems by reproducing the evolution of stellar mass function and the overall fraction of red galaxies. In this paper we compare the two model predictions of L-Galaxies （the other is Guo et al., G13） to SDSS data in detail. We find that in the H15 model the red fraction of central galaxies now agrees with the data due to their implementation of strong AGN feedback, but the stellar mass of centrals in massive halos is now slightly lower than what is indicated by the data. For satellite galaxies, the red fraction of low-mass galaxies （log M./M~ 〈 10） also agrees with the data, but the color of massive satellites （10 〈 logM,/M~ 〈 11） is slightly bluer. The correct color of centrals and the bluer color of massive satellites indicate that quenching in massive satellites is not strong enough. We also find that there are too many red spirals and less bulge-dominated galaxies in both H15 and G13 models. Our results suggest that additional mechanisms, such as more minor mergers or disk instability, are needed to slightly increase the stellar mass of the central galaxy in massive galaxies, mainly in the bulge component, and bulge dominated galaxies will be quenched not only by minor mergers, but also by some other mechanisms.

Stellar and HI Mass Functions Predicted by a Simple Preheating Galaxy Formation Model

According to the new preheating mechanism of galaxy formation suggested by Mo et al., we construct a simple model of formation of disk galaxies within the current paradigm of galaxy formation. It incorporates preheating, gas cooling, bulge formation and star for- mation. The predicted stellar and HI mass functions of galaxies are discussed and compared with the observations. It is found that our model can roughly match both the observed galaxy luminosity function and the observed HI-mass function.

Possible Habitats for NH_(3),NH_(2)D,H^(13)CN,HC^(15)N,SO,and C^(18)O in the Initial Conditions of High-mass Star Formation

The initial condition of high-mass star formation is a complex area of study because of the high densities(n_(H_(2))>106cm^(-3))and low temperatures(T_(dust)<18 K)involved.Under such conditions,many molecules become depleted from the gas phase by freezing out onto dust grains.However,the N-bearing and deuterated species could remain gaseous under these extreme conditions,suggesting that they may serve as ideal tracers.In this paper,using the Plateau de Bure Interferometer and Very Large Array observations at 1.3 mm,3.5 mm,and 1.3 cm,we investigate the possible habitats for NH_(3),NH_(2)D,H^(13)CN,HC^(15)N,SO,and C^(18)O in eight massive precluster and protocluster clumps G18.17,G18.21,G23.97N,G23.98,G23.44,G23.97S,G25.38,and G25.71.We found that the NH3cores are in good agreement with the 3.5 mm peak emission,but the NH_(3)is much more extended than the 3.5 mm emission structure.The SO distributions agree well with the 3.5 mm peaks for the evolved star formation stage,but we did not detect any SO emission in the four earliest star formation sources.C^(18)O is a poor tracer in conditions of the cold(■18 K)and dense(■10^(4)cm^(-3))cores,e.g.,the prestellar cores.We also found that the NH_(2)D cores are mainly located in the temperature range of 13.0-20.0 K,and the NH_(2)D lines may be strongly depleted above 20 K.

Understanding the Formation of Galaxies with Warm Dark Matter

The formation of galaxies with warm dark matter is approximately adiabatic. The cold dark matter limit is singular and requires relaxation. In these lecture notes, we develop, step-by-step, the physics of galaxies with warm dark matter, and their formation. The theory is validated with observed spiral galaxy rotation curves. These observations constrain the properties of the dark matter particles.

GABE: Galaxy Assembly with Binary Evolution

We developed a new semi-analytic galaxy formation model: Galaxy Assembly with Binary Evolution(GABE). For the first time, we introduce binary evolution into semi-analytic models of galaxy formation by using the Yunnan-Ⅱ stellar population synthesis model, which includes various binary interactions. When implementing our galaxy formation model onto the merger trees extracted from the Millennium simulation, it can reproduce a large body of observational results. We find that in the local universe, the model including binary evolution reduces the luminosity at optical and infrared wavelengths slightly, but it increases the luminosity at ultraviolet wavelengths significantly, especially in FUV band. The resulting luminosity function does not change very much over SDSS optical bands and infrared band, but the predicted colors are bluer, especially when the FUV band is under consideration. The new model allows us to explore the physics of various high energy events related to the remnants of binary stars, such as type Ia supernovae, short gamma-ray bursts and gravitational wave events, and their relation with host galaxies in a cosmological context.

History of Star Formation and Chemical Enrichment in the Milky Way Disk

Based on a physical treatment of the star formation law similar to that given by Efstathiou, we have improved our two-component chemical evolution model for the Milky Way disk. Two gas infall rates are compared, one exponential, one Gaussian. It is shown that the star formation law adopted in this paper depends more strongly on the gas surface density than that in Chang et al. It has large effects on the history of star formation and gas evolution of the whole disk. In the solar neighborhood, the history of chemical evolution and star formation is not sensitive to whether the infall rate is Gaussian or exponential. For the same infall time scale, both forms predict the same behavior for the current properties of the Galactic disk. The model predictions do depend on whether or not the infall time scale varies with the radius, but current available observations cannot decide which case is the more realistic. Our results also show that it would be inadequate to describe the gradient evolution along the Galactic disk by only one word "flatter" or "steeper", as was suggested by Hou et al. and Chiapinni et al. We point out that both the absolute value and the evolution of the abundance gradient may be different in the inner and outer regions.

Conditions for galaxy quenching at 0.5

We investigate two classes of conditions for galaxy quenching at 0.510^10 M⊙)have much higher stellar mass surface densities within the central 1 kpc(∑1)and smaller sizes than star-forming galaxies in the same stellar mass range.In addition,the quiescent fractions significantly increase with the increase of∑1 regardless of whether galaxies are centrals or satellites.In contrast,we find that the overall lower-mass quiescent galaxies(M*<~10^10M⊙)have slightly higher E1 and comparable sizes compared to starforming galaxies of the same mass and at the same redshift.At z<1.5,satellites have higher halo masses and larger quiescent fractions than those of centrals at a given∑1(stellar mass).Our findings indicate that the significant growth of the galaxy cores is closely related to the quenching of massive galaxies since z^2.5,while the environmental effect plays an important role in the quenching of low-mass galaxies at z≤1.5.

The evolution of stellar metallicity gradients of the Milky Way disk from LSS-GAC main sequence turn-off stars: a two-phase disk formation history?

Accurate measurements of stellar metallicity gradients in the radial and vertical directions of the disk and their temporal variations provide important constraints on the formation and evolution of the Milky Way disk. We use 297 042 main sequence turn-off stars selected from the LAMOST Spectroscopic Survey of the Galactic Anticenter（LSS-GAC） to determine the radial and vertical gradients of stellar metallicity,△[Fe/H]/△R and △[Fe/H]/△｜Z ｜ of the Milky Way disk in the direction of the anticenter. We determine ages of those turn-off stars by isochrone fitting and measure the temporal variations of metallicity gradients. We have carried out a detailed analysis of the selection effects resulting from the selection, observation and data reduction of LSS-GAC targets and the potential biases of a magnitude limited sample on the determinations of metallicity gradients. Our results show that the gradients, both in the radial and vertical directions, exhibit significant spatial and temporal variations. The radial gradients yielded by stars with the oldest ages（ 11 Gyr） are essentially zero at all heights from the disk midplane, while those given by younger stars are always negative. The vertical gradients deduced from stars with the oldest ages（ 11 Gyr）are negative and only show very weak variations with Galactocentric distance in the disk plane, R, while those yielded by younger stars show strong variations with R.After being essentially flat at the earliest epochs of disk formation, the radial gradients steepen as age decreases, reaching a maximum（steepest） at age 7–8 Gyr, and then they flatten again. Similar temporal trends are also found for the vertical gradients. We infer that the assembly of the Milky Way disk may have experienced at least two distinct phases. The earlier phase is probably related to a slow, pressure-supported collapse of gas, when the gas settles down to the disk mainly in the vertical direction. In the later phase, there are significant radial flows of gas in the disk, and the rate of gas inflow near the solar neighborhood reaches a maximum around a lookback time of 7–8 Gyr.The transition between the two phases occurs around a lookback time between 8 and11 Gyr. The two phases may be responsible for the formation of the Milky Way＇s thick and thin disks, respectively. Also, as a consequence, we recommend that stellar age is a natural, physical criterion to distinguish stars from the thin and thick disks. From an epoch earlier than 11 Gyr to one between 8 and 11 Gyr, there is an abrupt, significant change in magnitude of both the radial and vertical metallicity gradients, suggesting that stellar radial migration is unlikely to play an important role in the formation of the thick disk.

The formation and evolution of massive galaxies

The discovery of massive galaxies at high redshifts,especially the passive ones,poses a big challenge for the current standard galaxy formation models.Here we use the semi-analytic galaxy formation model developed by Henriques et al.to explore the formation and evolution of massive galaxies(MGs,stellar-mass M*>1011 M⊙).Different from previous works,we focus on the ones just formed(e.g.just reach?1011 M⊙).We find that most of the MGs are formed around z=0.6,with the earliest formation at z>4.Interestingly,although most of the MGs in the local Universe are passive,we find that only 13%of the MGs are quenched at the formation time.Most of the quenched MGs at formation already host a very massive supermassive black hole(SMBH)which could power the very effective AGN feedback.For the star-forming MGs,the ones with more massive SMBH prefer to quench in shorter timescales;in particular,those with MSMBH>107.5 M⊙have a quenching timescale of~0.5 Gyr and the characteristic MSMBH depends on the chosen stellar mass threshold in the definition of MGs as a result of their co-evolution.We also find that the"in-situ"star formation dominates the stellar mass growth of MGs until they are formed.Over the whole redshift range,we find the quiescent MGs prefer to stay in more massive dark matter halos,and have more massive SMBH and less cold gas masses.Our results provide a new angle on the whole life of the growth of MGs in the Universe.

AGN Lifetimes in UV-selected Galaxies: A Clue to Supermassive Black Hole-galaxy Coevolution

The coevolution between supermassive black holes(SMBHs) and their host galaxies has been proposed for more than a decade,albeit with little direct evidence about black hole accretion activities regulating galaxy star formation at z> 1.In this paper,we study the lifetimes of X-ray active galactic nuclei(AGNs) in UV-selected red sequence(RS),blue cloud(BC) and green valley(GV) galaxies,finding that AGN accretion activities are most prominent in GV galaxies at z ~1.5-2,compared with RS and BC galaxies.We also compare AGN accretion timescales with typical color transition timescales of UV-selected galaxies.We find that the lifetime of GV galaxies at z~1.5-2 is very close to the typical timescale when the AGNs residing in them stay in the high-accretion-rate mode at these redshifts;for BC galaxies,the consistency between the color transition timescale and the black hole strong accretion lifetime is more likely to happen at lower redshifts(z <1).Our results support the scenario where AGN accretion activities govern UV color transitions of host galaxies,making galaxies and their central SMBHs coevolve with each other.

The formation of a blue cluster in the local Universe

It is well known from the Butcher-Oemler effect that galaxies in dense environment are mostly red with little star formation and the fraction of blue galaxies in galaxy groups/clusters also declines rapidly with redshifts.A recent work by Hashimoto et al.reported a local ‘blue cluster’ with a high fraction of blue galaxies(∼0.57),higher than the model predictions.They ascribed this blue cluster to the feeding of gas along a filamentary structure around the cluster.In this work we use group catalog from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7(SDSS DR7) and the state-of-art of semi-analytic model(SAM) to investigate the formation of blue clusters in the local Universe.In total,we find four blue clusters with halo mass ∼10^14 M⊙ at 0.02 <z<0.082,while only the one found by Hashimoto et al.is in a filamentary structure.The SAM predicts that blue clusters have later formation time and most blue satellite galaxies are recently accreted.We conclude that the formation of blue clusters is mainly governed by newly accreted blue satellites,rather than the effect of large-scale environment.

Studying dynamical models of the core galaxy NGC 1399 with merging remnants

An investigation on the possible dynamical models of the core galaxy NGC 1399 is performed.Because early-type galaxies are likely to be formed through merging events, remnant rings are considered in the modeling process.A numerical survey over three parameters is employed to obtain the best-fit models that are completely consistent with observations.It is found that the inner slope of the dark matter profile is cuspy for this core galaxy.The existence of remnant rings in best-fit models indicates a merging history.The remnant ring explains the flattened surface brightness and thus could be the physical counterpart of the core structure of NGC 1399.

The HI gas and star formation in star-forming galaxies selected from ALFALFA

This paper presents the results of Hαimaging of 169 galaxies randomly selected from the α.40-SDSS catalog.The sample has excluded all low surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs) whose central surface brightness in B band (μ0(B)) fainter than 22.5 mag arcsec-2.It can be used as the counterparts sample to LSBGs.We observed their Hα and R band images by using the 2.16 m telescope at the Xinglong Observatory of the National Astronomical Observatories,Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC).The main goal of this work is to present the properties of those galaxies,together with Hαflux and star formation-,gas-,stellar mass-surface density.In addition,we confirm the correlations among HI content,stellar mass and star formation in ALFALFA galaxies.The HI mass increases with stellar mass,and the slope slows down at the higher stellar mass.The overall trend was that the specific star formation rate (s SFR) decreases with stellar mass,and the sSFR dropped sharply when the stellar mass is close to 1010.3~1010.5M⊙.The weak correlation between SFR/MHIand MHIimplies the HI contribute little to star formation.Our sample,which are mostly star-forming galaxies,follows the revisited Kennicutt-Schmidt law as well as the Kennicutt-Schmidt law.

The non-Gaussian distribution of galaxy gravitational fields

We perform a theoretical analysis of the observational dependence between angular momentum of galaxy clusters and their mass（richness）, based on the method introduced in our previous paper.For that we obtain the distribution function of gravitational fields for astronomical objects（like galaxies and/or smooth halos of different kinds） due to their tidal interaction. By applying the statistical method of Chandrasekhar, we are able to show that the distribution function is determined by the form of interaction between objects and for multipole（tidal） interaction it is never Gaussian. Our calculation permits demonstrating how the alignment of galaxy angular momenta depends on cluster richness. The specific form of the corresponding dependence is due to assumptions made about cluster morphology. Our approach also predicts the time evolution of stellar object angular momenta within CDM and ΛCDM models. Namely, we have shown that angular momentum of galaxies increases with time.

Star formation properties in barred galaxies (SFB) Ⅱ. NGC 2903 and NGC 7080

Stellar bars are important for the secular evolution of disk galaxies because they can drive gas into the galactic central regions. To investigate the star formation properties in barred galaxies, we presented a multi-wavelength study of two barred galaxies： NGC 2903 and NGC 7080. We performed the three-component bulge-diskbar decomposition using the 3.6 μm images, and identified the bulges in the two galaxies as pseudobulges. Based on the narrowband Hα images, the star formation clumps were identified and analyzed. The clumps in the bulge regions have the highest surface densities of star formation rates in both galaxies, while the star formation activities in the bar of NGC 2903 are more intense than those in the bar of NGC 7080. Finally, we compared our results with the scenario of bar-driven secular evolution in previous studies, and discussed the possible evolutionary stages of the two galaxies.

A sample of E+A galaxy candidates in the Second Data Release of LAMOST Survey

A sample of 70 E＋A galaxies is selected from 37 206 galaxies in the second data release of the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope（LAMOST）. This sample is selected according to the criteria for E＋A galaxies defined by Goto, and each of these objects is further visually identified. In this sample, most objects are low redshift E＋A galaxies with z 〈 0.25, and are located in an area of the sky with high Galactic latitude and magnitude from 14 to 18 mag in the g, r and i bands. A stellar population analysis of the whole sample indicates that the E＋A galaxies are characterized by both young and old stellar populations（SPs）, and the metalrich SPs have relatively higher contributions than the metal-poor ones. Additionally, a morphological classification of these objects is performed based on images taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

An isolated compact galaxy triplet

We report the discovery of an isolated compact galaxy triplet SDSS J084843.45＋164417.3, which is first detected by the LAMOST spectral survey and then confirmed by a spectroscopic observation of the BFOSC mounted on the 2.16 meter telescope located at Xinglong Station, which is administered by National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is found that this triplet is an iso- lated and extremely compact system, which has an aligned configuration and very small radial velocity dispersion. The member galaxies have similar colors and show marginal star formation activities. These results support the opinion that the compact triplets are well-evolved systems rather than hierarchically forming structures. This serendipitous discovery reveals the limitations of fiber spectral redshift surveys in studying such a compact system, and demonstrates the necessity of additional observations to complete the current redshift sample.