The influence of external environment at cosmic noon on the subsequent evolution of galaxy stellar mass

ABSTRACT Connecting high-redshift galaxies to their low-redshift descendants is one of the most important and challenging tasks of galaxy evolution studies. In this work, we investigate whether incorporating high-redshift environmental factors improves the accuracy of matching high-redshift galaxies to their $z\sim 0$ descendants, using data from the Eagle and Magneticum simulations. Using random forest regression, we evaluate the relative importance of a set of environmental metrics at $z\sim 3$ in determining the stellar mass of descendant galaxies at $z\sim 0$. We identify the spherical overdensity within 1 cMpc ($\delta _{1,\mathrm{sp}}$) as the most important environmental predictor. Tracking galaxies at $z\sim 3$ with similar initial stellar masses but different $\delta _{1,\mathrm{sp}}$ values, we find that, across all mass bins in both simulations, high-density environments produce $z\sim 0$ descendants with median stellar masses up to eight times higher than the descendants of galaxies in low-density environments. For galaxies with $M_{*}\lesssim 10^{10}{\rm M}_{\odot }$, the difference is attributable to more merger-induced mass growth in high-density environments, whereas for higher mass galaxies, it results from a combination of enhanced in situ star formation and greater external mass accretion. By assessing the importance of overdensity across multiple scales and redshifts, we find that at $z\gtrsim 2$, environmental factors become as important as stellar mass in predicting the stellar mass of $z\sim 0$ descendants. Compared to using stellar mass at $z\sim 3$ alone, incorporating $\delta _{1,\mathrm{sp}}$ reduces the scatter in the residuals between the predicted and actual stellar masses by approximately 30 per cent in Eagle and 60 per cent in Magneticum.