Cosmic Reionization On Computers: The Galaxy-Halo Connection between $5 \leq z \leq10$

Hanjue Zhu, Camille Avestruz, Nickolay Y. Gnedin

Published 2020-01-07Version 1

We explore the connection between the stellar component of galaxies and their host halos during the epoch of reionization ($5 \leq z\leq10$) using the CROC (Cosmic Reionization on Computers) simulations. We compare simulated galaxies with observations and find that CROC underpredicts the abundance of luminous galaxies when compared to observed UV luminosity functions, and analogously the most massive galaxies when compared to observed stellar mass functions. We can trace the deficit of star formation to high redshifts, where the slope of the star formation rate to stellar mass relation is consistent with observations, but the normalization is systematically low. This results in a star formation rate density and stellar mass density that is systematically offset from observations. However, the less luminous or lower stellar mass objects have luminosities and stellar masses that agree fairly well with observational data. We explore the stellar-to-halo mass ratio, a key quantity that is difficult to measure at high redshifts and that models do not consistently predict. In CROC, the stellar-to-halo mass ratio {\it decreases} with redshift, a trend opposite to some abundance matching studies. These discrepancies uncover where future effort should be focused in order to improve the fidelity of modeling cosmic reionization. We also compare the CROC galaxy bias with observational measurements using Lyman-Break Galaxy (LBG) samples. The good agreement of simulation and data shows that the clustering of dark matter halos is properly captured in CROC.