Dynamical constraints on the galaxy-halo connection
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Dark matter halos comprise the bulk of the universe's mass, yet must be probed by the luminous galaxies that form within them. A key goal of modern astrophysics is to robustly relate the visible and dark mass, which to first order means relating the properties of galaxies and halos. The aim of this thesis is to develop and evaluate models of the galaxy-halo connection using observations of galaxy dynamics. In particular, I build empirical models based on the technique of halo abundance matching for five key dynamical scaling relations of galaxies -- the Tully-Fisher, Faber-Jackson, mass-size and mass discrepancy-acceleration relations, and Fundamental Plane -- which relate their baryon distributions and rotation or velocity dispersion profiles. I then develop a statistical scheme based on approximate Bayesian computation to compare the predicted and measured values of a number of summary statistics describing the relations' important features. I find some features to be naturally accounted for by an abundance matching approach and others to impose new constraints on the galaxy-halo connection; the remainder are challenging to reproduce and may imply galaxy-halo correlations beyond the scope of basic abundance matching. Besides providing concrete statistical tests of specific galaxy formation theories, these results will be of use for guiding the inputs of empirical and semi-analytic galaxy formation models, which require galaxy-halo correlations to be imposed by hand.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2017 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Desmond, Harry |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Physics. |
| Primary advisor | Wechsler, Risa H. (Risa Heyrman) |
| Thesis advisor | Wechsler, Risa H. (Risa Heyrman) |
| Thesis advisor | Abel, Tom G, 1970- |
| Thesis advisor | Blandford, Roger D |
| Advisor | Abel, Tom G, 1970- |
| Advisor | Blandford, Roger D |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Harry Desmond. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Physics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2017. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2017 by Harry F. Desmond
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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