Connecting galaxy formation and the dark universe

Risa Wechsler

Stanford University

Dark matter halos are the fundamental building blocks in the growth of structure and they provide the framework for our modern understanding of galaxy formation. I will discuss the current state-of-the-art in our understanding of the connection between galaxy properties and their dark matter hosts over a range of masses and redshifts. In the context of a given cosmological model, I will show how the galaxy-halo relation can be tightly constrained at low redshift, and how it can be used to infer the full star formation histories of galaxies. We find that most stars at all epochs form in halos around the mass of the Milky Way and that the average star formation efficiency at this mass is nearly constant since z ~ 3. I will then discuss how we can use this understanding along with new probes of structure from the next generation of surveys --- including the Dark Energy Survey, which will map the structure over the last ~ 8 billion years with ~300 hundred million galaxies --- to simultaneously inform our understanding of the nature of dark energy, dark matter, and the physics of galaxy evolution.