The evolution of the baryon fraction in halos as a cause of scatter in the galaxy stellar mass in the EAGLE simulation

Abstract: The EAGLE simulation suite has previously been used to investigate the relationship between the stellar mass of galaxies, $M_{}$, and the properties of dark matter halos, using the hydrodynamical reference simulation combined with a dark matter only (DMO) simulation having identical initial conditions. The stellar masses of central galaxies in halos with $M_{\mathrm{200c}} > 10^{11} \mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ were shown to correlate with the DMO halo maximum circular velocity, with $\approx 0.2$ dex of scatter that is uncorrelated with other DMO halo properties. Here we revisit the origin of the scatter in the $M_{}-V_{\mathrm{max, DMO}}$ relation in EAGLE at $z = 0.1$. We find that the scatter in $M_{}$ correlates with the mean age of the galaxy stellar population such that more massive galaxies at fixed $V_{\mathrm{max, DMO}}$ are younger. The scatter in the stellar mass and mean stellar population age results from variation in the baryonic mass, $M_{\mathrm{bary}} = M_{\mathrm{gas}} + M_{}$, of the galaxies' progenitors at fixed halo mass and concentration. At the redshift of peak correlation ($z \approx 1$), the progenitor baryonic mass accounts for $75\%$ of the variance in the $z=0.1$ $M_{*}-V_{\mathrm{max, DMO}}$ relation. The scatter in the baryonic mass, in turn, is primarily set by differences in feedback strength and gas accretion over the course of the evolution of each halo.