2003/06/19 by Weipeng Lin, W. P. Lin, Yipeng Jing +2 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Dark matter #Dark matter halo #Excursion #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Galaxy rotation curve #Halo #Mass distribution #Physics #Redshift #Structure formation #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2003.06924.x
published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.344:1327,2003 · 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2003/06/19 · openalex publication_date 2003/09/22 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In this paper we use numerical simulations to test the formation time distribution of dark matter haloes predicted by the analytical excursion set approaches. The formation time distribution is closely linked to the conditional mass function and this test is therefore an indirect probe of this distribution. The excursion set models tested are the extended Press–Schechter (EPS) model, the ellipsoidal collapse model, and the non-spherical collapse boundary model. Three sets of simulations (six realizations) have been used to investigate the halo formation time distribution for halo masses ranging from dwarf-galaxy-like haloes (M= 10−3M*, where M* is the characteristic non-linear mass scale) to massive haloes of M= 8.7M*. None of the models can match the simulation results at both high and low redshift. In particular, dark matter haloes formed generally earlier in our simulations than predicted by the EPS model. This discrepancy might help explain why semi-analytical models of galaxy formation, based on EPS merger trees, underpredict the number of high redshift galaxies compared with recent observations.