A direct measurement of the baryonic mass function of galaxies & implications for the galactic baryon fraction

TL;DR

This study directly measures the baryonic mass function of galaxies using optical and HI data, revealing a decreasing baryon fraction in low-mass halos and challenging existing galaxy formation models.

Contribution

It provides the first direct measurement of the galactic baryon fraction across halo masses, highlighting a monotonic decrease in low-mass halos and implications for feedback processes.

Findings

Baryon fraction decreases with decreasing halo mass.

Atomic gas accounts for some baryons but not enough in low-mass halos.

Standard feedback models struggle to explain the observed baryon deficit.

Abstract

We use both an HI-selected and an optically-selected galaxy sample to directly measure the abundance of galaxies as a function of their "baryonic" mass (stars + atomic gas). Stellar masses are calculated based on optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and atomic gas masses are calculated using atomic hydrogen (HI) emission line data from the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey. By using the technique of abundance matching, we combine the measured baryonic function (BMF) of galaxies with the dark matter halo mass function in a LCDM universe, in order to determine the galactic baryon fraction as a function of host halo mass. We find that the baryon fraction of low-mass halos is much smaller than the cosmic value, even when atomic gas is taken into account. We find that the galactic baryon deficit increases monotonically with decreasing halo mass, in contrast with previous studies which suggested an approximately constant baryon fraction at the low-mass end. We argue that the observed baryon fractions of low mass halos cannot be explained by reionization heating alone, and that additional feedback mechanisms (e.g. supernova blowout) must be invoked. However, the outflow rates needed to reproduce our result are not easily accommodated in the standard picture of galaxy formation in a LCDM universe.