Gravity and the Nonlinear Growth of Structure in the Carnegie-Spitzer-IMACS Redshift Survey

Abstract

A key obstacle to developing a satisfying theory of galaxy evolution is the difficulty in extending analytic descriptions of early structure formation into full nonlinearity, the regime in which galaxy growth occurs. Extant techniques, though powerful, are based on approximate numerical methods whose Monte Carlo-like nature hinders intuition building. Here, we develop a new solution to this problem and its empirical validation. We first derive closed-form analytic expectations for the evolution of fixed percentiles in the real-space cosmic density distribution, {\it averaged over representative volumes observers can track cross-sectionally\}. Using the Lagrangian forms of the fluid equations, we show that percentiles in $\delta$---the density relative to the median---should grow as $\delta (t)\propto {\delta }_0^{\alpha }{t}^{\beta }$, where $\alpha \equiv 2$ and $\beta \equiv 2$ for Newtonian gravity at epochs after the overdensities transitioned to nonlinear growth. We then use 9.5 sq. deg. of Carnegie-Spitzer-IMACS Redshift Survey data to map {\it galaxy\} environmental densities over $0.2<z<1.5$ ($\sim$7 Gyr) and infer $\alpha =1.98\pm 0.04$ and $\beta =2.01\pm 0.11$---consistent with our analytic prediction. These findings---enabled by swapping the Eulerian domain of most work on density growth for a Lagrangian approach to real-space volumetric averages---provide some of the strongest evidence that a lognormal distribution of early density fluctuations indeed decoupled from cosmic expansion to grow through gravitational accretion. They also comprise the first exact, analytic description of the nonlinear growth of structure extensible to (arbitrarily) low redshift. We hope these results open the door to new modeling of, and insight-building into, the galaxy growth and its diversity in cosmological contexts.

arXiv comment13 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 23 August 2019, and accepted for publication, 9 January 2020. Some more typo(s) fixed

References in corpus (32)

• The Average Star Formation Histories of Galaxies in Dark Matter Halos from z=0-8
• High Redshift Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field. Color Selection and Star Formation History to z=4
• Mass and environment as drivers of galaxy evolution in SDSS and zCOSMOS and the origin of the Schechter function
• Star Formation in AEGIS Field Galaxies since z=1.1 : The Dominance of Gradually Declining Star Formation, and the Main Sequence of Star-Forming Galaxies
• Cosmological Perturbation Theory in the Synchronous and Conformal Newtonian Gauges
• Cosmological Perturbation Theory in the Synchronous vs. Conformal Newtonian Gauge
• Galactic star formation and accretion histories from matching galaxies to dark matter haloes
• The CANADA-FRANCE REDSHIFT SURVEY XIII: The luminosity density and star-formation history of the Universe to z ~ 1
• MultiDark simulations: the story of dark matter halo concentrations and density profiles
• What Shapes the Luminosity Function of Galaxies?
• A Recipe for Galaxy Formation Shaun Cole
• Mass and Environment as Drivers of Galaxy Evolution II: The quenching of satellite galaxies as the origin of environmental effects
• Deriving the Nonlinear Cosmological Power Spectrum and Bispectrum from Analytic Dark Matter Halo Profiles and Mass Functions
• The PRIsm MUlti-Object Survey (PRIMUS) I: Survey Overview and Characteristics
• The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS). Full spectroscopic data and auxiliary information release (PDR-2)
• The IMACS Cluster Building Survey: IV. The Log-normal Star Formation History of Galaxies
• The environmental dependence of the stellar mass function at z~1: Comparing cluster and field between the GCLASS and UltraVISTA surveys
• The Arizona CDFS Environment Survey (ACES): A Magellan/IMACS Spectroscopic Survey of the Chandra Deep Field South
• MultiDark-Galaxies: data release and first results
• Return to [Log-]Normalcy: Rethinking Quenching, The Star Formation Main Sequence, and Perhaps Much More
• Gravitational Instability of Cold Matter
• The Carnegie-Spitzer-IMACS Redshift Survey of Galaxy Evolution since z=1.5: I. Description and Methodology and More!
• Building a Predictive Model of Galaxy Formation - I: Phenomenological Model Constrained to the $z=0$ Stellar Mass Function
• Perturbation Theory of the Cosmological Log-Density Field
• Decoding the Star-Forming Main Sequence or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Central Limit Theorem
• Matching the Evolution of the Stellar Mass Function Using Log-normal Star Formation Histories
• Self-consistency of the Excursion Set Approach
• The IMACS Cluster Building Survey. III. The Star Formation Histories of Field Galaxies
• Demonstrating Diversity in Star Formation Histories with the CSI Survey
• Planck intermediate results. XXIII. Galactic plane emission components derived from Planck with ancillary data
• Late Bloomer Galaxies: Growing Up in Cosmic Autumn
• On the Origin and Evolution of the Galaxy Stellar Mass Function

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Stochastic modelling of star-formation histories II: star-formation variability from molecular clouds and gas inflow
• The Diversity and Variability of Star Formation Histories in Models of Galaxy Evolution
• LATIS: The Ly$\alpha$ Tomography IMACS Survey
• Stochastic Modelling of Star Formation Histories III. Constraints from Physically-Motivated Gaussian Processes
• Constraints on Fluctuating Star Formation Rates for Intermediate-mass Galaxies with H$\alpha$ and UV Luminosities