The FLAMINGO simulation view of cluster progenitors observed in the epoch of reionization with JWST

Abstract

Motivated by the recent JWST discovery of galaxy overdensities during the Epoch of Reionzation, we examine the physical properties of high-z protoclusters and their evolution using the FLAMINGO simulation suite. We investigate the impact of the apertures used to define protoclusters, because the heterogeneous apertures used in the literature have limited our understanding of the population. Our results are insensitive to the uncertainties of the subgrid models at a given resolution, whereas further investigation into the dependence on numerical resolution is needed. When considering galaxies more massive than M* ≃ 108 M⊙, the FLAMINGO simulations predict a dominant contribution from progenitors similar to those of the Coma cluster to the cosmic star-formation rate density during the reionization epoch. Our results indicate the onset of suppression of star formation in the protocluster environments as early as z ≃ 5. The galaxy number density profiles are similar to NFW at z ≲ 1 while showing a steeper slope at earlier times before the formation of the core. Different from most previous simulations, the predicted star-formation history for individual protoclusters is in good agreement with observations. We demonstrate that, depending on the aperture, the integrated physical properties including the total (dark matter and baryonic) mass can be biased by a factor of 2 to 5 at z = 5.5–7, and by an order of magnitude at z ≲ 4. This correction suffices to remove the ≃ 3 σ tensions with the number density of structures found in recent JWST observations.