A physical understanding of how reionization suppresses accretion on to dwarf haloes

We develop and test with cosmological simulations a physically motivated theory for how the interplay between gravity, pressure, cooling, and self-shielding set the redshift-dependent mass scale at which haloes can accrete intergalactic gas. This theory provides a physical explanation for the halo mass scale that can accrete unshocked intergalactic gas, which has been explained with ad hoc criteria tuned to reproduce the results of a few simulations. Furthermore, it provides an intuitive explanation for how this mass scale depends on the reionization redshift, the amplitude of the ionizing background, and the redshift. We show that accretion is inhibited on to more massive haloes than had been thought because previous studies had focused on the gas fraction of haloes rather than the instantaneous mass that can accrete gas. A halo as massive as 1011 M⊙ cannot accrete intergalactic gas at z = 0, even though typically its progenitors were able to accrete gas at higher redshifts. We describe a simple algorithm that can be implemented in semi-analytic models, and we compare the predictions of this algorithm to numerical simulations.