2016/05/31 by S. Kaviraj, Sugata Kaviraj, C. Laigle +14 · 236 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #COSMIC cancer database #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Luminous infrared galaxy #Physics #Redshift #Star formation #Stellar mass #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Universe #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stx126
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, stx126 (Oxford University Press) · Accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2017/01/16 · openalex publication_date 2017/01/27 · arxiv updated 2017/05/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We compare the predictions of Horizon-AGN, a hydrodynamical cosmological simulation that uses an adaptive mesh refinement code, to observational data in the redshift range 0 < z < 6. We study the reproduction, by the simulation, of quantities that trace the aggregate stellar-mass growth of galaxies over cosmic time: luminosity and stellar-mass functions, the star formation main sequence, rest-frame UV–optical–near-infrared colours and the cosmic star formation history. We show that Horizon-AGN, which is not tuned to reproduce the local Universe, produces good overall agreement with these quantities, from the present day to the epoch when the Universe was 5 per cent of its current age. By comparison to Horizon-noAGN, a twin simulation without active galactic nuclei feedback, we quantify how feedback from black holes is likely to help shape galaxy stellar-mass growth in the redshift range 0 < z < 6, particularly in the most massive galaxies. Our results demonstrate that Horizon-AGN successfully captures the evolutionary trends of observed galaxies over the lifetime of the Universe, making it an excellent tool for studying the processes that drive galaxy evolution and making predictions for the next generation of galaxy surveys.