Questioning Planck-selected star-forming high-redshift galaxy protoclusters and their fate

TL;DR

This study uses hydrodynamical simulations to evaluate whether Planck-selected high-redshift star-forming protoclusters are the ancestors of massive galaxy clusters, confirming the effectiveness of Planck's selection despite line-of-sight contamination.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation-based approach to assess the evolution of Planck high-z protoclusters into massive clusters, providing new selection criteria based on observable properties.

Findings

Simulations reproduce observed star formation rates of protoclusters.

Approximately 63-72% of protoclusters are predicted to evolve into massive clusters.

Good agreement in stellar mass and galaxy counts between simulations and observations.

Abstract

About 2100 star-forming galaxy protocluster candidates at z=1-4 were identified at sub-mm wavelengths in the Planck all sky survey. Follow-up spectroscopic observations of a few candidates have confirmed the presence of actual galaxy overdensities with large star-formation rates. In this work, we use state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulations to investigate whether the Planck high-z sub-mm sources are progenitors of massive clusters at z=0. To match the PHz sources with simulated halos, we select the most star-forming halos from z = 3 to z =1.3 in the TNG300 simulation. The total star formation rate (SFR) of the simulated protocluster candidates is computed from the SFR of all the galaxies within an aperture corresponding to the Planck beam size, including those along the line-of-sight. The simulations reproduce the Planck derived SFRs as the sum of both, the SFR of at least one of the most SF high-z halo, and the average contribution from SF sources along the line-of-sight. Focusing on the spectroscopically confirmed PHz protoclusters, we compare the observed properties of their galaxy members with those in the most SF simulated halos. We find a good agreement in the stellar mass and SFR distributions, and in the galaxy number counts, but the SFR-stellar mass relation of the simulated galaxies tends to be shifted to lower SFRs with respect to the observed one. Based on the estimated final masses of the simulated halos, we infer that between 63% and 72% of the Planck selected protoclusters will evolve into massive galaxy clusters at z=0. Despite contamination from star-forming galaxies along the line of sight, we confirm the efficiency of Planck to select star-forming protoclusters at Cosmic Noon with the simulations, and provide a new criterion for selecting the most massive cluster progenitors at high-z, using observables like the number of galaxy members and their SFR distribution.