Massive galaxies in the young Universe, ten billion years ago, formed stars at surprising intensities. Although this is commonly attributed to violent mergers, the properties of many of these galaxies are incompatible with such events, showing gas-rich, clumpy, extended rotating disks not dominated by spheroids. Cosmological simulations and clustering theory are used to explore how these galaxies acquired their gas. Here we report that they are 'stream-fed galaxies', formed from steady, narrow, cold gas streams that penetrate the shock-heated media of massive dark matter haloes. A comparison with the observed abundance of star-forming galaxies implies that most of the input gas must rapidly convert to stars. One-third of the stream mass is in gas clumps leading to mergers of mass ratio greater than 1:10, and the rest is in smoother flows. With a merger duty cycle of 0.1, three-quarters of the galaxies forming stars at a given rate are fed by smooth streams. The rarer, submillimetre galaxies that form stars even more intensely are largely merger-induced starbursts. Unlike destructive mergers, the streams are likely to keep the rotating disk configuration intact, although turbulent and broken into giant star-forming clumps that merge into a central spheroid. This stream-driven scenario for the formation of discs and spheroids is an alternative to the merger picture.

We use the IllustrisTNG simulations to study the demographics and properties of jellyfish galaxies in the full cosmological context. By jellyfish galaxies, we mean satellites orbiting in massive groups and clusters that exhibit highly asymmetric distributions of gas and gas tails. In particular, we select TNG100 galaxies at low redshifts (z ≤ 0.6) with stellar mass exceeding 10 9.5 M and with host halo masses in the range 10 13 ≤ M 200c / M ≤ 10 14.6 . Among more than about 6 000 (2 600) galaxies with stars (and some gas), we identify 800 jellyfish galaxies by visually inspecting their gas and stellar mass maps in random projections. Namely, about 31 per cent of cluster satellites are found with signatures of ram-pressure stripping and gaseous tails stemming from their main luminous bodies. This is a lower limit: the random orientation entails a loss of about 30 per cent of galaxies that in an optimal projection would otherwise be identified as jellyfish. Furthermore, jellyfish galaxies are more frequent at intermediate and large cluster-centric distances (r/R 200c 0.25), in more massive hosts and at smaller satellite masses, and they typically orbit supersonically. The gaseous tails usually extend in opposite directions to the galaxy trajectory, with no relation between tail orientation and position of the hosts center. Finally, jellyfish galaxies are late infallers (< 2.5 − 3 Gyrs ago, at z = 0) and the emergence of gaseous tails correlates well with the presence of bow shocks in the intra-cluster medium.

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) which reside at the centres of galaxies can inject vast amounts of energy into the surrounding gas and are thought to be a viable mechanism to quench star-formation in massive galaxies. Here we study the $10^{\rm 9-12.5}\, \mathrm{M_\odot }$ stellar mass central galaxy population of the IllustrisTNG simulation, specifically the TNG100 and TNG300 volumes at z = 0, and show how the three components – SMBH, galaxy, and circumgalactic medium (CGM) – are interconnected in their evolution. We find that gas entropy is a sensitive diagnostic of feedback injection. In particular, we demonstrate how the onset of the low-accretion BH feedback mode, realised in the IllustrisTNG model as a kinetic, BH-driven wind, leads not only to star-formation quenching at stellar masses ≳ 1010.5 M⊙ but also to a change in thermodynamic properties of the (non-star-forming) gas, both within the galaxy and beyond. The IllustrisTNG kinetic feedback from SMBHs increases the average gas entropy, within the galaxy and in the CGM, lengthening typical gas cooling times from $\rm 10-100\, \mathrm{Myr}$ to $\rm 1-10\, \mathrm{Gyr}$, effectively ceasing ongoing star-formation and inhibiting radiative cooling and future gas accretion. In practice, the same AGN feedback channel is simultaneously ‘ejective’ and ‘preventative’ and leaves an imprint on the temperature, density, entropy, and cooling times also in the outer reaches of the gas halo, up to distances of several hundred kiloparsecs. In the IllustrisTNG model, a long-lasting quenching state can occur for a heterogeneous CGM, whereby the hot and dilute CGM gas of quiescent galaxies contains regions of low-entropy gas with short cooling times.

We find, using cosmological simulations of galaxy clusters, that the hot X-ray emitting intra-cluster medium (ICM) enclosed within the outer accretion shock extends out to R shock ∼ (2-3)R vir , where R vir is the standard virial radius of the halo. Using a simple analytic model for satellite galaxies in the cluster, we evaluate the effect of ram pressure stripping on the gas in the inner discs and in the haloes at different distances from the cluster centre. We find that significant removal of star-forming disc gas occurs only at r 0.5R vir , while gas removal from the satellite halo is more effective and can occur when the satellite is found between R vir and R shock . Removal of halo gas sets the stage for quenching of the star formation by starvation over 2-3 Gyr, prior to the satellite entry to the inner cluster halo. This scenario explains the presence of quenched galaxies, preferentially discs, at the outskirts of galaxy clusters, and the delayed quenching of satellites compared to central galaxies.

We study the stellar-to-halo mass relation (SHMR) for central and satellite galaxies with total dynamical masses above $10^{10.5}~\rm {M}_\odot$ using the suite of cosmological magneto-hydrodynamical simulations IllustrisTNG. In particular, we quantify environmental effects on satellite populations from TNG50, TNG100, and TNG300 located within the virial radius of group- and cluster-like hosts with total masses of $10^{12-15.2}~\rm {M}_\odot$. At fixed stellar mass, the satellite SHMR exhibits a distinct shift towards lower dynamical mass compared to the SHMR of centrals. Conversely, at fixed dynamical mass, satellite galaxies appear to have larger stellar-to-total mass fractions than centrals by up to a factor of a few. The systematic deviation from the central SHMR is larger for satellites in more massive hosts, at smaller cluster-centric distances, with earlier infall times, and that inhabit higher local density environments; moreover, it is in place already at early times (z ≲ 2). Systematic environmental effects might contribute to the perceived galaxy-to-galaxy variation in the measured SHMR when galaxies cannot be separated into satellites and centrals. The SHMR of satellites exhibits a larger scatter than centrals (by up to ∼0.8 dex), over the whole range of dynamical mass. The shift of the satellite SHMR results mostly from tidal stripping of their dark matter, which affects satellites in an outside-in fashion: the departure of the satellite SHMR from the centrals’ relation diminishes for measurements of dynamical mass in progressively smaller apertures. Finally, we provide a family of fitting functions for the SHMR predicted by IllustrisTNG.

We utilize cosmological simulations of 16 galaxy clusters at redshifts z = 0 and z = 0.6 to study the effect of inflowing streams on the properties of the X-ray emitting intracluster medium. We find that the mass accretion occurs predominantly along streams that originate from the cosmic web and consist of heated gas. Clusters that are unrelaxed in terms of their X-ray morphology are characterized by higher mass inflow rates and deeper penetration of the streams, typically into the inner third of the virial radius. The penetrating streams generate elevated random motions, bulk flows and cold fronts. The degree of penetration of the streams may change over time such that clusters can switch from being unrelaxed to relaxed over a time-scale of several giga years.

We present the cumulative star-formation histories (SFHs) of &gt;15000 dwarf galaxies (M* = 107 − 10 M⊙) simulated with the TNG50 run of the IllustrisTNG suite across a vast range of environments. The key factors that determine the dwarfs’ SFHs are their central/satellite status and stellar mass, with centrals and more massive dwarfs assembling their stellar mass at later times, on average, compared to satellites and lower mass dwarfs. Satellites (in hosts of mass M200c, host = 1012 − 14.3 M⊙) assembled 90 per cent of their stellar mass $\sim 7.0_{-5.5}^{+3.3}$ Gyr ago, on average and within the 10th–90th percentiles, while the centrals did so only $\sim 1.0_{-0.5}^{+4.0}$ Gyr ago. TNG50 predicts a large diversity in SFHs, so that individual dwarfs can have significantly different cumulative SFHs compared to the stacked median SFHs. Satellite dwarfs with the highest stellar mass to host cluster mass ratios have the latest stellar mass assembly. Conversely, satellites at fixed stellar and host halo mass found closer to the cluster centre or accreted at earlier times show significantly earlier stellar mass assembly. These trends and the shapes of the SFHs themselves are a manifestation of the varying proportions within a given subsample of quenched versus star-forming galaxies, which exhibit markedly distinct SFH shapes. Finally, satellite dwarfs in the most massive hosts have higher SFRs at early times, well before accretion into their z = 0 host, compared to a control sample of centrals mass-matched at the time of accretion. This is the result of the satellites being preprocessed in smaller hosts prior to accretion. Our findings are useful theoretical predictions for comparison to future resolved-stellar-population observations.

Virial shocks at edges of cosmic-web structures are a clear prediction of standard structure formation theories. We derive a criterion for the stability of the post-shock gas and of the virial shock itself in spherical, filamentary and planar infall geometries. When gas cooling is important, we find that shocks become unstable, and gas flows uninterrupted towards the center of the respective halo, filament or sheet. For filaments, we impose this criterion on self-similar infall solutions. We find that instability is expected for filament masses between 10 11 − 10 13 M ⊙ Mpc −1 . Using a simplified toy model, we then show that these filaments will likely feed halos with 10 10 M ⊙ M halo 10 13 M ⊙ at redshift z = 3, as well as 10 12 M ⊙ M halo 10 15 M ⊙ at z = 0.The instability will affect the survivability of the filaments as they penetrate gaseous halos in a non-trivial way. Additionally, smaller halos accreting onto non-stable filaments will not be subject to ram-pressure inside the filaments. The instreaming gas will continue towards the center, and stop either once its angular momentum balances the gravitational attraction, or when its density becomes so high that it becomes self-shielded to radiation.