Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons^™

An Empirical Approach To Understanding Of Star Formation In Dark Matter Halos, Zhankui Lu

Doctoral Dissertations

We present a data-driven approach to understand the star formation in dark matter halos over cosmic time. With a simple empirical model and advanced tools for Bayesian inference, we try to constrain how galaxies have assembled their stars across cosmic time using stellar mass functions (SMFs) and the luminosity function of cluster galaxies. The key ingredients of the empirical model include dark halo merger trees and a generic function that links star formation rate (SFR) to the host halos. We found a new characteristic redshift z_c ~ 2 above which the SFR in low mass halos < 10¹¹ solar mass …