Formation and Morphology of the First Galaxies in the Cosmic Morning

Abstract

We investigate the formation and morphological evolution of the first galaxies in the cosmic morning ($10\gtrsim z\gtrsim 4$) using the Horizon Run 5 (HR5) simulation. For galaxies above the stellar mass $M_{\star ,\min }=2\times 10^9{M}_{\odot }$, we classify them into disk, spheroid, and irregular types according to their asymmetry and stellar mass morphology. We find that about 2/3 of the galaxies have a Sérsic index $<1.5$, reflecting the dominance of disk-type morphology in the cosmic morning. The rest are evenly distributed as incidental and transient irregulars or spheroids. These fractions are roughly independent of redshift and stellar mass up to $\sim 10^{10}{M}_{\odot }$. Almost all the first galaxies with $M_{\star }>M_{\star ,\min }$ at $z>4$ form at initial peaks of the matter density field. Large-scale structures in the universe emerge and grow like cosmic rhizomes as the underlying matter density fluctuations grow and form associations of galaxies in rare overdense regions and the realm of the galactic world is stretched into relatively lower-density regions along evolving filaments. The cosmic web of galaxies forms at lower redshifts when most rhizomes globally percolate. The primordial angular momentum produced by the induced tidal torques on protogalactic regions is correlated with the internal kinematics of galaxies and tightly aligned with the angular momentum of the total galaxy mass. The large-scale tidal field imprinted in the initial conditions seems responsible for the dominance of disk morphology, and for the tendency of galaxies to re-acquire a disk post-distortion.

26 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

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