Related papers: Tracing Galaxies Through Cosmic Time with Number D…
Connecting galaxies with their descendants (or progenitors) at different redshifts can yield strong constraints on galaxy evolution. Observational studies have historically selected samples of galaxies using a physical quantity, such as…
Comparing galaxies across redshifts at fixed cumulative number density is a popular way to estimate the evolution of specific galaxy populations. This method ignores scatter in mass accretion histories and galaxy-galaxy mergers, which can…
Galaxy populations at different cosmic epochs are often linked together by comoving cumulative number density in observational studies. Many theoretical works, however, have shown that the number densities of tracked galaxy populations…
Galaxy evolution can be studied observationally by linking progenitor and descendant galaxies through an evolving cumulative number density selection. This procedure can reproduce the expected evolution of the median stellar mass from…
Using observed stellar mass functions out to $z=5$, we measure the main progenitor stellar mass growth of descendant galaxies with masses of $\log{M_{*}/M_{\odot}}=11.5,11.0,10.5,10.0$ at $z\sim0.1$ using an evolving cumulative number…
We propose a general framework leveraging the halo-galaxy connection to link galaxies observed at different redshift in a statistical way, and use the link to infer the redshift evolution of the galaxy population. Our tests based on…
Using the cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamical code GADGET-3 we make a realistic assessment of the technique of using constant cumulative number density as a tracer of galaxy evolution at high redshift. We find that over a redshift…
We present a study on the stellar mass growth of the progenitors of local massive galaxies with a variety of number density selections with $n\le1\times10^{-4}\,\rm{Mpc^{-3}}$ (corresponding to $M_*=10^{11.24}\rm{M_{\odot}}$ at z=0.3) in…
Aims: We present a new method that uses luminosity or stellar mass functions combined with clustering measurements to select samples of galaxies at different redshifts likely to follow a progenitor-to-descendant relationship. As the method…
The cumulative number density matching approach equates number densities between adjacent redshifts to derive empirical galaxy evolution tracks from the observed galaxy stellar mass function. However, it is well known that this approach…
Cumulative number density matching of galaxies is a method to observationally connect descendent galaxies to their typical main progenitors at higher redshifts and thereby to assess the evolution of galaxy properties. The accuracy of this…
Galaxy comoving number density is commonly used to forge progenitor/descendant links between observed galaxy populations at different epochs. However, this method breaks down in the presence of galaxy mergers, or when galaxies experience…
Studying the average properties of galaxies at a fixed comoving number density over a wide redshift range has become a popular observational method, because it may trace the evolution of galaxies statistically. We test this method by…
The evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function is especially useful to test the current model of galaxy formation. Observational data have revealed a few inconsistencies with predictions from the $\Lambda {\rm CDM}$ model. For example,…
The mass and structural evolution of massive galaxies is one of the hottest topics in galaxy formation. This is because it may reveal invaluable insights into the still debated evolutionary processes governing the growth and assembly of…
Understanding the evolution of galaxies provides crucial insights into a broad range of aspects in astrophysics, including structure formation and growth, the nature of dark energy and dark matter, baryonic physics, and more. It is,…
The growth of galaxies is a key problem in understanding the structure and evolution of the universe. Galaxies grow their stellar mass by a combination of star formation and mergers, with a relative importance that is redshift dependent.…
The cumulative comoving number-density of galaxies as a function of stellar mass or central velocity dispersion is commonly used to link galaxy populations across different epochs. By assuming that galaxies preserve their number-density in…
We have constructed merger trees for galaxies in the Illustris Simulation by directly tracking the baryonic content of subhalos. These merger trees are used to calculate the galaxy-galaxy merger rate as a function of descendant stellar…
We use galaxy and dark halo data from the public database for the Millennium Simulation to study the growth of galaxies in the De Lucia et al. (2006) model for galaxy formation. Previous work has shown this model to reproduce many aspects…