The cosmological origin of the Tully-Fisher relation

We use high-resolution cosmological simulations that include the effects of gasdynamics and star formation to investigate the origin of the Tully-Fisher relation in the standard Cold Dark Matter cosmogony. Luminosities are computed for each model galaxy using their full star formation histories and the latest spectrophotometric models. We find that at z=0 the stellar mass of model galaxies is proportional to the total baryonic mass within the virial radius of their surrounding halos. Circular velocity then correlates tightly with the total luminosity of the galaxy, reflecting the equivalence between mass and circular velocity of systems identified in a cosmological context. The slope of the relation steepens slightly from the red to the blue bandpasses, and is in fairly good agreement with observations. Its scatter is small, decreasing from \~0.45 mag in the U-band to ~0.34 mag in the K-band. The particular cosmological model we explore here seems unable to account for the zero-point of the correlation. Model galaxies are too faint at z=0 (by about two magnitudes) if the circular velocity at the edge of the luminous galaxy is used as an estimator of the rotation speed. The Tully-Fisher relation is brighter in the past, by about ~0.7 magnitudes in the B-band at z=1, at odds with recent observations of z~1 galaxies. We conclude that the slope and tightness of the Tully-Fisher relation can be naturally explained in hierarchical models but that its normalization and evolution depend strongly on the star formation algorithm chosen and on the cosmological parameters that determine the universal baryon fraction and the time of assembly of galaxies of different mass.