Cosmological feedback from a halo assembly perspective

The impact of feedback from galaxy formation on cosmological probes is typically quantified in terms of the suppression of the matter power spectrum in hydrodynamical compared to gravity-only simulations. In this paper, we instead study how baryonic feedback impacts halo assembly histories and thereby imprints on cosmological observables. We investigate the sensitivity of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect (tSZ) power spectrum, X-ray number counts, weak lensing and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (kSZ) stacked profiles to halo populations as a function of mass and redshift. We then study the imprint of different feedback implementations in the FLAMINGO suite of cosmological simulations on the assembly histories of these halo populations, as a function of radial scale. We find that kSZ profiles target lower-mass halos (M200 m∼1013.1M⊙) compared to all other probes considered (M200 m∼1015M⊙). Feedback is inefficient in high-mass clusters with ∼1015M⊙ at z=0, but was more efficient at earlier times in the same population, with a ∼5–10% effect on mass at 2z4 (depending on radial scale). Conversely, for lower-mass halos with ∼1013M⊙ at z=0, feedback exhibits a ∼5–20% effect on mass at z=0 but had little impact at earlier times (z>2). These findings are tied together by noting that, regardless of redshift, feedback most efficiently redistributes baryons when halos reach a mass of M200 m≃1012.8M⊙ and ceases to have any significant effect by the time M200 m≃1015M⊙. We put forward strategies for minimizing sensitivity of lensing analyses to baryonic feedback, and for exploring baryonic resolutions to the unexpectedly low tSZ power in cosmic microwave background observations.