# Ab initio galaxy formation

## 1. Introduction

The main ideas of hierarchical galaxy formation were set out more than twenty years ago by White & Rees (1978). These authors proposed that galaxy formation is a two stage process. In the first stage, dark matter haloes form by the dissipationless accretion of smaller units and through mergers. The second stage consists of the dissipative condensation of baryons to the centre of dark matter haloes. After the first stars form from this gas, feedback effects can play an important role, regulating star formation and thus controlling the efficiency of galaxy formation in dark matter haloes of different mass.

The past decade has seen the development of semi-analytic models to study the ab initio formation and evolution of galaxies, within the framework of the growth of structure in the dark matter (e.g. Kauffmann etal 1993, Cole etal 1994, Somerville & Primack 1998). The dissipationless physics in these models is well understood and has been explored extensively using N-body simulations of gravitational instability (for recent illustrative examples see Jenkins etal 1998 and Ghigna etal 1999). The dissipative processes are, however, not at all well understood. The idea that hot gas would cool radiatively to make galaxies was also proposed in the late 1970s, but numerical simulations of this process with sufficient resolution to identify “galaxies” within cosmological volumes are only now becoming possible (Pearce etal 1999). In the semi-analytic models, the processes of gas cooling, star formation, the attendant feedback and galaxy mergers are described by a set of simple, physically motivated rules. The values of the required parameters are set by comparing the model results with properties of the local galaxy population, such as the field galaxy luminosity function or the Tully-Fisher relation (see Somerville & Primack for a discussion of the various models), to produce a fully specified model with strong predictive capabilities.

## 2. Ab initio  galaxy formation

The semi-analytic model described by Cole etal (1999) is a development of the one described in earlier papers by the Durham group (e.g. Cole etal 1994, Baugh, Cole & Frenk 1996). In addition to the use of improved algorithms, for example in the Monte-Carlo generation of dark matter halo merger histories, a broader range of physical processes is now modelled, greatly expanding the number of galaxy properties that we can predict.

The size of a galactic disk is determined by the conservation of the angular momentum of cooling gas. The gas is assumed to have the same specific angular momentum profile as the dark matter halo, whose spin originates from tidal torques that act during its formation. The size of a bulge is computed by conserving energy when two fragments merge to form the bulge and applying the virial theorem. The condensation of baryonic material at the centre of a dark matter halo alters the structure of the halo, causing a contraction. The resulting size of the disk and bulge components depends upon the self-gravity of the baryons and the gravity of the modified dark matter halo.

The chemical enrichment of the baryons is also followed in the new model. Episodes of star formation result in the production of metals that can be transferred to the reservoirs of hot and cold gas within each dark matter halo. Feedback from star formation can reheat some of the cold gas, thus providing a further channel through which to transfer metals to the hot gas component. The calculation of the scale length of the galactic disk and of the metallicity of the cold gas allows us to obtain an optical depth for the disk, and hence to calculate the extinction of starlight by dust.

The main property of the local galaxy population that we use to constrain our models is the field galaxy luminosity function. Figure 1 shows two recent determinations of the luminosity function in the $`b_J`$-band. These surveys are taken from the same parent photometric catalogue, but extend to different apparent magnitude limits. The solid line shows the luminosity function of the fiducial model of Cole etal (1999), which is in very good agreement with the measurement by Zucca etal (1997) over a dynamic range of $`10^4`$ in luminosity and $`10^5`$ in space density. The dotted line shows a model in which the feedback arising from star formation is assumed to be a much stronger function of circular velocity, as in the model of Cole etal (1994). Star formation in low circular velocity objects is extremely inefficient in this case, and a reasonable match is obtained to the flat faint end slope of the luminosity function found by Ratcliffe etal (1998). The dashed line shows the slope of the dark matter halo mass function; this slope, $`\alpha 1.8`$, would be obtained for the luminosity function in the absence of feedback and if galaxies merged on the same timescale as their parent dark matter haloes.

## 3. The star formation history of the universe

The use of the redshifted Lyman-break spectral feature to isolate candidate high redshift galaxies has proven to be a remarkably successful and efficient way of constructing large samples of galaxies at significant lookback times (Steidel etal 1996 and references therein). The application of this photometric technique to deep images obtained from the ground and to the Hubble Deep Fields has allowed the star formation history of the universe to be constructed (e.g. Madau etal 1996, Steidel etal 1999).

Figure 2 shows a subset of the currently available observational estimates of the star formation rate per unit volume, as inferred from the flux density at various wavelengths, indicated by the key in the Figure. The dotted line shows the star formation history predicted by the model of Cole etal (1994), which predates the oldest data points on the Figure by two years (see Figure 16 of Baugh etal 1998).

The dashed line shows the star formation history in the fiducial model of Cole etal (1999), estimated from the rest-frame luminosity density at $`1500\AA `$. The solid line shows how this estimate is changed when obscuration by dust is taken into account; this line is the one that should be compared to the data points, which have not been corrected for the effects of dust. The star formation rate per unit volume in the model is reduced by a factor of $`2.5`$ at $`z=4`$ as a result of dust extinction of the $`1500\AA `$ light.

The small differences between the dotted line (Cole etal 1994) and the solid line are mainly due to the different parameterisations of the strength of feedback as a function of circular velocity used in the two models. The particular choice of feedback model is motivated by the attempt to reproduce the faint end of the local luminosity function (see Figure 1 and the discussion in the previous Section). The weaker feedback employed by Cole etal (1999) results in a somewhat broader peak in the global star formation rate around $`z23`$, compared with the dotted line, which peaks at $`z1.52`$. However, when expressed in terms of lookback time (as shown by the scale at the top of the Figure), which is the appropriate variable for computing the integrated stellar mass, this difference is in fact quite small.

## 4. The evolution of galaxy clustering

Two approaches have been used to obtain predictions for the clustering of galaxies from semi-analytic models. In the first approach, a bias parameter is computed for dark matter halos to relate the amplitude of the correlation function of the haloes to that of the underlying dark matter distribution (Mo & White 1996). The semi-analytic model is then used to populate dark matter haloes with galaxies, and a selection criterion, such as an apparent magnitude limit, is applied to the model galaxies. The bias parameter for the galaxies is obtained by summing the bias of each halo, weighted by its abundance and the number of galaxies it contains that satisfy the selection criterion (e.g. Baugh etal 1999). This approach was used by Baugh etal (1998) to predict successfully that Lyman break galaxies have a correlation length similar to that of bright galaxies at the present day, and much larger than that of the dark matter in any viable model at $`z3`$.

Another method is to use the semi-analytic model to populate dark matter haloes in a N-body simulation of hierarchical clustering with galaxies (Kauffman etal 1997, 1999; Governato etal 1998, Benson etal 1999). This approach has the advantage of being able to probe galaxy clustering down to small scales and to include the distortion of the clustering pattern that arises from the peculiar motions of galaxies. Benson etal (1999) find that the clustering of galaxies in the fiducial model of Cole etal (1999) is in very good agreement with the two point correlation function measured for APM galaxies. This is a remarkable result because the measured correlation function is a power law over more than a decade in separation, whereas the correlation function of the dark matter has two inflection points over the same range of scales. Furthermore, on scales around $`1h^1`$Mpc, the amplitude of the dark matter correlation function is higher than that measured for galaxies, implying that galaxies are $`anti`$-biased or less clustered compared to the dark matter. The level of small scale clustering depends sensitively on how dark matter haloes are populated by galaxies, and thus upon the details of the galaxy formation process.

The first approach described above has been used to predict the evolution of the correlation length of galaxies, measured in comoving units, with redshift, as shown in Figure 3 (Baugh etal 1999; similar results are found using the N-body technique, Kauffmann etal 1998). The clustering evolution of galaxies is markedly different to that displayed by the dark matter, and furthermore is not well described by the ‘$`ϵ`$-model’ commonly used to interpret such data. The correlation length of galaxies initially decreases to $`z1`$, and then starts to increase again at higher redshifts. The model predicts that galaxies that are bright enough to be seen at high redshift are hosted by the most massive dark matter haloes in place at these redshifts. Such haloes are biased tracers of the dark matter distribution.

Traditionally, the angular clustering of galaxies imaged in one band has been quantified in terms of the correlation amplitude measured at a fixed angular scale plotted as a function of the limiting apparent magnitude of the sample. Even at very faint magnitudes, the median redshift of the sample does not increase rapidly and in addition, the clustering signal is diluted by projection effects. A powerful observational technique that is now being pursued by many groups is to take deep images in many different filters and to measure the angular clustering of galaxies selected to lie within a limited baseline in photometric redshift. This method has been applied to study the evolution of galaxy clustering to redshift $`z1`$ (Connolly etal 1998) and beyond using the Hubble Deep Field (e.g. Magliocchetti & Maddox 1998). At present, the fields studied are small and the results may be subject to sample variance. The detection of the dip in the galaxy correlation length shown in Figure 3 would provide evidence for hierarchical galaxy formation, but it may tell us more about the details of the process of galaxy formation than about the underlying cosmology. In any event, the semi-analytic models described here will have an important part to play in the interpretation of such results.

### Acknowledgments.

CMB would like to thank the organisers for an enjoyable and informative meeting and for providing assistance to attend the workshop.

## References

Baugh, C. M., Cole, S., Frenk, C. S., 1996, MNRAS, 283, 1361

Baugh, C. M., Cole, S., Frenk, C. S., Lacey, C.G., 1998, ApJ, 498, 504

Baugh, C. M., etal, 1999, MNRAS, 305, L21

Benson, A.J., etal, 1999, MNRAS, submitted, astro-ph/9903343

Cole, S., etal, 1994, MNRAS, 271, 781

Cole, S., Lacey, C.G., Baugh, C.M., Frenk, C.S., 1999, in preparation.

Connolly, A.J., Szalay, A.S., Brunner, R.J., 1998, ApJ, 499, L125

Ghigna, S., etal, 1999, MNRAS, 300, 146.

Governato, F., etal 1998, Nature, 392, 359.

Jenkins, A.R., etal (The Virgo Consortium), 1998, ApJ, 499, 20

Kauffmann, G., White, S.D.M., Guiderdoni, B., 1993, MNRAS, 264, 201

Kauffmann, G., Nusser, A., Steinmetz, M., 1997, MNRAS, 286, 795

Kauffmann, G., etal, 1999, MNRAS, 303, 188

Kauffmann, G., Colberg, J.M., Diaferio, A., White, S.D.M., 1998, astro-ph/9809168

Madau, P., etal 1996, MNRAS, 283, 1388

Magliocchetti, M., Maddox, S.J., 1998, astro-ph/9811320

Mo H. J., White S. D. M., 1996, MNRAS, 282, 347

Ratcliffe A., Shanks T., Parker Q. A., Fong R., 1998, MNRAS, 293, 197

Pearce, F.R., etal (The Virgo Consortium) 1999, ApJ, in press, astro-ph/9905160

Somerville R. S., Primack J. R., 1998, astro-ph/9806228

Steidel, C.C., etal, 1996, ApJ, 462, L17

Steidel, C.C., etal, 1999, ApJ, 519, 1.

White, S.D.M., Rees, M.J., 1978, MNRAS, 183, 341

Zucca E., et al., 1997, A&A, 326, 477