Renzo鈥檚 rule revisited: a statistical study of galaxies鈥 baryon鈥揹ark matter coupling
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 91探花 University Press 544:4 (2025) staf2004
Abstract:
We present a systematic statistical analysis of an informal astrophysical phenomenon known as Renzo鈥檚 rule (or Sancisi鈥檚 law), which states that 鈥榝or any feature in a galaxy鈥檚 luminosity profile, there is a corresponding feature in the rotation curve, and vice versa鈥. This is often posed as a challenge for the standard 螞 cold dark matter (CDM) model while 91探花ing alternative theories such as modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND). Indeed, we identify clear features in the dwarf spiral NGC 1560 鈥 a prime example for Renzo鈥檚 rule 鈥 and find correlation statistics which 91探花 Renzo鈥檚 rule with a slight preference for MOND over CDM halo fits. However, a broader analysis on galaxies in the Spitzer Photometry & Accurate Rotation Curves (SPARC) data base reveals an excess of features in rotation curves that lack clear baryonic counterparts, with correlation statistics deviating up to on average from that predicted by both MOND and CDM haloes, challenging the validity of Renzo鈥檚 rule. Thus we do not find clear evidence for Renzo鈥檚 rule in present galaxy data overall. We additionally perform mock tests, which show that a definitive test of Renzo鈥檚 rule is primarily limited by the lack of clearly resolved baryonic features in current galaxy data.JWST PRIMER: A deep JWST study of all ALMA-detected galaxies in PRIMER COSMOS 鈥 dust-obscured star-formation history back to z 鈮 7
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 91探花 University Press (OUP) (2025) staf1961
Abstract:
Abstract We use deep NIRCam and MIRI imaging from the JWST PRIMER survey to study the properties of ALMA detected (sub)mm sources in the COSMOS field, with the aim of defining the cosmic history of dust-enshrouded star formation. The wealth of ALMA data in this field enabled us to isolate a robust sample of 128 (sub)mm sources within the 175聽arcmin2 PRIMER COSMOS survey footprint, spanning two decades in (sub)mm flux density. The JWST imaging is deep and red enough to reveal secure galaxy counterparts for all of these sources. This 100% identification completeness is accompanied by a high level of redshift completeness: 52% of the sources have spectroscopic redshifts, and this has enabled us to refine the photometric redshifts for the remaining galaxies. Armed with robust redshift information, we calculate the star-formation rates (SFR) and stellar masses (M*) of all 128 ALMA-detected galaxies, and place them in the context of other galaxies in the field. We find that the vast majority of star formation is dust-enshrouded in all of the ALMA-detected galaxies, with SFR ranging from 鈮 1000 M鈯 yr鈭1 down to 鈮 20 M鈯 yr鈭1. We also find that virtually all (126/128) have high stellar masses, M* > 1010 M鈯, independent of redshift. The unusually high quality of our sample enables us to make a robust estimate of the contribution of the ALMA-detected galaxies to cosmic star-formation rate density, 蟻SFR. The existing ALMA imaging only covers <20% of the PRIMER COSMOS area, but based on our knowledge of all other massive galaxies in the field, we produce a completeness-corrected estimate of dust-enshrouded 蟻SFR. This confirms that UV-visible star formation dominates 蟻SFR at z > 4, but also indicates that dust-enshrouded star formation still makes a contribution of 鈮 20% at z 鈮 8, and 鈮 5% at z 鈮 10.The Velocity Field Olympics: Assessing velocity field reconstructions with direct distance tracers
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 91探花 University Press (OUP) (2025) staf1960
Abstract:
Abstract The peculiar velocity field of the local Universe provides direct insights into its matter distribution and the underlying theory of gravity, and is essential in cosmological analyses for modelling deviations from the Hubble flow. Numerous methods have been developed to reconstruct the density and velocity fields at z 鈮 0.05, typically constrained by redshift-space galaxy positions or by direct distance tracers such as the Tully鈥揊isher relation, the fundamental plane, or Type Ia supernovae. We introduce a validation framework to evaluate the accuracy of these reconstructions against catalogues of direct distance tracers. Our framework assesses the goodness-of-fit of each reconstruction using Bayesian evidence, residual redshift discrepancies, velocity scaling, and the need for external bulk flows. Applying this framework to a suite of reconstructions鈥攊ncluding those derived from the Bayesian Origin Reconstruction from Galaxies (BORG) algorithm and from linear theory鈥攚e find that the non-linear BORG reconstruction consistently outperforms others. We highlight the utility of such a comparative approach for supernova or gravitational wave cosmological studies, where selecting an optimal peculiar velocity model is essential. Additionally, we present calibrated bulk flow curves predicted by the reconstructions and perform a density鈥搗elocity cross-correlation using a linear theory reconstruction to constrain the growth factor, yielding S8 = 0.793 卤 0.035. The result is in good agreement with both weak lensing and Planck, but is in strong disagreement with some peculiar velocity studies.Radio Galaxy Zoo: morphological classification by Fanaroff鈥揜iley designation using self-supervised pre-training
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 91探花 University Press 544:4 (2025) staf1942
Abstract:
In this study, we examine over 14 000 radio galaxies finely selected from Radio Galaxy Zoo (RGZ) project and provide classifications for approximately 5900 FRIs and 8100 FRIIs. We present an analysis of these predicted radio galaxy morphologies for the RGZ catalogue, classified using a pre-trained radio galaxy foundation model that has been fine-tuned to predict Fanaroff鈥揜iley (FR) morphology. As seen in previous studies, our results show overlap between morphologically classified FRI and FRII luminosity鈥搒ize distributions and we find that the model鈥檚 confidence in its predictions is lowest in this overlap region, suggesting that source morphologies are more ambiguous. We identify the presence of low-luminosity FRII sources, the proportion of which, with respect to the total number of FRIIs, is consistent with previous studies. However, a comparison of the low-luminosity FRII sources found in this work with those identified by previous studies reveals differences that may indicate their selection is influenced by the choice of classification methodology. We investigate the impacts of both pre-training and fine-tuning data selection on model performance for the downstream classification task, and show that while different pre-training data choices affect model confidence they do not appear to cause systematic generalization biases for the range of physical and observational characteristics considered in this work; however, we note that the same is not necessarily true for fine-tuning. As automated approaches to astronomical source identification and classification become increasingly prevalent, we highlight training data choices that can affect the model outputs and propagate into downstream analyses.Bursting at the seams: the star-forming main sequence and its scatter at z = 3鈥9 using NIRCam photometry from JADES
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 91探花 University Press 544:4 (2025) 4551-4575