Comparison of cosmological simulations and deep submillimetre galaxy surveys

TL;DR

This study compares cosmological simulations with recent deep submillimetre galaxy surveys, focusing on dust emission properties, and finds good overall agreement but underestimates extreme starburst activity at high redshift.

Contribution

It introduces simulations including dust physics and evaluates their consistency with recent deep submillimetre survey data across various galaxy properties.

Findings

Simulations reproduce local galaxy dust properties.

Models match IR emission properties at z=1-4.

Underpredict IR luminosity function at z>2 for the most luminous galaxies.

Abstract

Recent progress in submillimetre surveys by single-dish telescopes allows us to further challenge the consistency between cosmological simulations and observations. In particular, we compare our simulations that include dust formation and destruction with the recent SCUBA-2 surveys (`STUDIES') by putting emphases on basic observational properties of dust emission such as dust temperature, size of infrared (IR)-emitting region, IR luminosity function and IRX--$\beta$ relation. After confirming that our models reproduce the local galaxy properties, we examine the STUDIES sample at $z\approx 1-4$, finding that the simulation reproduces the aforementioned quantities except for the $z\gtrsim 2$ IR luminosity function at the massive end ($\sim 10^{13}$ L$_{\odot}$). This means that the current simulation correctly reproduces the overall scaling between the size and luminosity (or star formation rate) of dusty region, but lacks extreme starburst phenomena at $z\gtrsim 2$. We also discuss extinction curves and possible AGN contribution.