The connection between massive galaxies and their dark matter haloes from z=0.25 to z ∼ 4 from the combined COSMOS, XMM-LSS and ECDF-S fields
Abstract
Understanding how galaxies populate and grow within dark matter haloes is essential for linking the observed evolution of galaxies to the hierarchical growth of structure. We present a galaxy clustering analysis using optical and near-infrared data from the UltraVISTA and VIDEO surveys covering $9.3$ deg2 across the COSMOS, XMM-LSS and ECDF-S fields, ∼ 5× larger than previous comparable studies, providing sufficient volume to determine the halo occupation of the most massive galaxies to z∼ 4. We measure the angular two-point correlation function for stellar-mass-selected galaxies over 0.25<z<4 and by combining the three fields, we reduce the cosmic variance by a factor of ∼2 compared to the individual fields. The stellar-to-halo mass ratio peaks at a halo mass of Mh≈1012 M⊙ and is a maximum at z∼ 1. For the most massive galaxies, the peak halo mass (Mhpeak) increases from z=1→ 0, while the peak stellar mass in such haloes remains approximately constant, indicating that at z<1 massive galaxy formation becomes less efficient. We also find a steady increase in the satellite fraction since z∼ 1, from which we infer that massive halos continue to grow hierarchically while their central galaxies experience suppressed stellar-mass growth. We suggest this is due to the central massive galaxies having their growth controlled by feedback from active galactic nuclei feedback, likely from low-power stochastic radio emission.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{stylianou2026connection,
title = {{The connection between massive galaxies and their dark matter haloes from $z=0.25$ to $z \sim 4$ from the combined COSMOS, XMM-LSS and ECDF-S fields}},
author = {Natalia Stylianou and Matt J. Jarvis and Rohan G. Varadaraj and Peter W. Hatfield and Joel Hamlett and Catherine L. Hale and Tariq Yasin},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.19030},
eprint = {2610.19030},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19030},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The connection between massive galaxies and their dark matter haloes from z=0.25 to z ∼ 4 from the combined COSMOS, XMM-LSS and ECDF-S fields
AU - Natalia Stylianou
AU - Matt J. Jarvis
AU - Rohan G. Varadaraj
AU - Peter W. Hatfield
AU - Joel Hamlett
AU - Catherine L. Hale
AU - Tariq Yasin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.19030
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19030
AB - Understanding how galaxies populate and grow within dark matter haloes is essential for linking the observed evolution of galaxies to the hierarchical growth of structure. We present a galaxy clustering analysis using optical and near-infrared data from the UltraVISTA and VIDEO surveys covering $9.3$ deg^2 across the COSMOS, XMM-LSS and ECDF-S fields, ∼ 5× larger than previous comparable studies, providing sufficient volume to determine the halo occupation of the most massive galaxies to z∼ 4. We measure the angular two-point correlation function for stellar-mass-selected galaxies over 0.25<z<4 and by combining the three fields, we reduce the cosmic variance by a factor of ∼2 compared to the individual fields. The stellar-to-halo mass ratio peaks at a halo mass of M_h≈10^12 M_⊙ and is a maximum at z∼ 1. For the most massive galaxies, the peak halo mass (M_h^peak) increases from z=1→ 0, while the peak stellar mass in such haloes remains approximately constant, indicating that at z<1 massive galaxy formation becomes less efficient. We also find a steady increase in the satellite fraction since z∼ 1, from which we infer that massive halos continue to grow hierarchically while their central galaxies experience suppressed stellar-mass growth. We suggest this is due to the central massive galaxies having their growth controlled by feedback from active galactic nuclei feedback, likely from low-power stochastic radio emission.
ER -