The relationship between galaxy and halo sizes in the Illustris and IllustrisTNG simulations

TL;DR

This study compares galaxy-to-halo size ratios in the Illustris and IllustrisTNG simulations, finding that TNG aligns well with observational constraints while Illustris does not, and explores the evolution and scatter of these ratios over cosmic time.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of galaxy-halo size relations in two major simulations and assesses their consistency with observational constraints, highlighting differences and evolutionary behaviors.

Findings

Illustris predicts higher galaxy-to-halo size ratios than observed.

IllustrisTNG shows good agreement with abundance matching constraints.

Most haloes oscillate around the median size ratio over time.

Abstract

Abundance matching studies have shown that the average relationship between galaxy radius and dark matter halo virial radius remains nearly constant over many orders of magnitude in halo mass, and over cosmic time since about $z=3$. In this work, we investigate the predicted relationship between galaxy radius $r_{e}$ and halo virial radius $R_{\rm h}$ in the numerical hydrodynamical simulations Illustris and IllustrisTNG from $z\sim 0$--3, and compare with the results from the abundance matching studies. We find that Illustris predicts much higher $r_e/R_{\rm h}$ values than the constraints obtained by abundance matching, at all redshifts, as well as a stronger dependence on halo mass. In contrast, IllustrisTNG shows very good agreement with the abundance matching constraints. In addition, at high redshift it predicts a strong dependence of $r_e/R_{\rm h}$ on halo mass on mass scales below those that are probed by existing observations. We present the predicted $r_e/R_{\rm h}$ relations from Illustris and IllustrisTNG for galaxies divided into star-forming and quiescent samples, and quantify the scatter in $r_e/R_{\rm h}$ for both simulations. Further, we investigate whether this scatter arises from the dispersion in halo spin parameter and find no significant correlation between $r_e/R_{\rm h}$ and halo spin. We investigate the paths in $r_e/R_{\rm h}$ traced by individual haloes over cosmic time, and find that most haloes oscillate around the median $r_e/R_{\rm h}$ relation over their formation history.