Tracing the galaxy-halo connection with galaxy clustering in COSMOS-Web from z = 0.1 to z ∼ 12

¹ Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, UMR 7095, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, 98 bis boulevard Arago, F-75014 Paris, France
² Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Denmark
³ Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Jagtvej 128, 2200 Copenhagen, Denmark
⁴ Aix Marseille University, CNRS, CNES, LAM, Marseille, France
⁵ Department of Astronomy, The University of Texas at Austin, 2515 Speedway Blvd Stop C1400, Austin, TX 78712, USA
⁶ Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 10 Yuanhua Road, Nanjing 210023, China
⁷ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Hilo, 200 W Kawili St, Hilo, HI 96720, USA
⁹ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
¹⁰ Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics, School of Physics and Astronomy, Rochester Institute of Technology, 84 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623, USA
¹¹ Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
¹² Caltech/IPAC, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
¹³ Northeastern University, 100 Forsyth St., Boston, MA 02115, USA
¹⁴ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 662, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
¹⁵ Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg, UMR 7550, 67000 Strasbourg, France
¹⁶ Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
¹⁷ LUX, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, 75014 Paris, France
¹⁸ Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA

^⋆ Corresponding author: louise.paquereau@iap.fr

Received: 20 January 2025
Accepted: 1 August 2025

Abstract

We explore the evolving relationship between galaxies and their dark matter halos from z ∼ 0.1 to z ∼ 12 using mass-limited angular clustering measurements in the 0.54 deg² of the COSMOS-Web survey, the largest contiguous JWST extragalactic survey. This study provides the first measurements of the mass-limited two-point correlation function at z ≥ 10 and a consistent analysis spanning 13.4 Gyr of cosmic history, setting new benchmarks for future simulations and models. Using a halo occupation distribution (HOD) framework, we derived characteristic halo masses and the stellar-to-halo mass ratio (SHMR) across redshifts and stellar mass bins. Our results first indicate that HOD models fit data at z ≥ 2.5 best when incorporating a nonlinear scale-dependent halo bias, boosting clustering at nonlinear scales (r = 10 − 100 kpc). We find that galaxies at z ≥ 10.5 with log(M_⋆/M_⊙)≥8.85 are predominantly central galaxies in halos with M_h ∼ 10^10.5 M_⊙, achieving a star formation efficiency (SFE) of ε_SF = M_⋆/(f_bM_h) up to 1 dex higher than at z ≤ 1. The high galaxy bias at z ≥ 8 suggests that these galaxies reside in massive halos with an intrinsic high SFE, challenging stochastic SHMR scenarios. Our SHMR evolves significantly with redshift, starting very high at z ≥ 10.5, decreasing until z ∼ 2 − 3, then increasing again until the present. Current hydrodynamical simulations fail to reproduce both massive high-z galaxies and this evolution, while semi-empirical models linking SFE to halo mass, accretion rates, and redshift align with our findings. We propose that early galaxies (z > 8) experience bursty star formation without significant feedback altering their growth, driving the rapid growth of massive galaxies observed by JWST. Over time, the increasing feedback efficiency and the exponential halo growth end up suppressing star formation. At z ∼ 2 − 3 and later, the halo growth slows down, while star formation continues, supported by gas reservoirs in halos.