Astro2020: Empirically Constraining Galaxy Evolution
Abstract
Over the past decade, empirical constraints on the galaxy-dark matter halo connection have significantly advanced our understanding of galaxy evolution. Past techniques have focused on connections between halo properties and galaxy stellar mass and/or star formation rates. Empirical techniques in the next decade will link halo assembly histories with galaxies' circumgalactic media, supermassive black holes, morphologies, kinematics, sizes, colors, metallicities, and transient rates. Uncovering these links will resolve many critical uncertainties in galaxy formation and will enable much higher-fidelity mock catalogs essential for interpreting observations. Achieving these results will require broader and deeper spectroscopic coverage of galaxies and their circumgalactic media; survey teams will also need to meet several criteria (cross-comparisons, public access, and covariance matrices) to facilitate combining data across different surveys. Acting on these recommendations will continue enabling dramatic progress in both empirical modeling and galaxy evolution for the next decade.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1903.04509,
title = {Astro2020: Empirically Constraining Galaxy Evolution},
author = {Peter Behroozi and Matthew R. Becker and Frank C. van den Bosch and Jarle Brinchmann and Charlie Conroy and Mark Dickinson and Christopher M. Hirata and Andrew Hearin and Alexie Leauthaud and Chun Ly and Yao-Yuan Mao and Benjamin P. Moster and Christine O'Donnell and Casey Papovich and Aldo Rodríguez-Puebla and Rachel Somerville and Erik Tollerud and Jeremy Tinker and Yun Wang and Risa H. Wechsler and Charity Woodrum and Ann Zabludoff and Dennis Zaritsky and Andrew R. Zentner and Huanian Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.04509},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Science white paper submitted to the Astro2020 Decadal Survey