The evolution of substructure - I. A new identification method

By Stuart P. D. Gill, A. Knebe, B. Gibson. 2004

353 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We describe our new 'MLAPM halo finder' (MHF), which is based on the adaptive grid structure of the N-body code MLAPM. We then extend the MHF code in order to track the orbital evolution of gravitationally bound objects through any given cosmological N-body simulation -our so-called 'MLAPM halo tracker' (MHT). The mode of operation of MHT is demonstrated using a series of eight high-resolution N-body simulations of galaxy clusters. Each of these haloes hosts more than one million particles within their virial radii r vir . We use MHT as well as MHF to follow the temporal evolution of hundreds of individual satellites, and show that the radial distribution of these substructure satellites follows a 'universal' radial distribution irrespective of the environment and formation history of the host halo. This in fact might pose another problem for simulations of cold dark matter structure formation, as there are recent findings by Taylor, Silk & Babul that the Milky Way satellites are found preferentially closer to the Galactic Centre and simulations underestimate the amount of central substructure. Further, this universal substructure profile is anti-biased with respect to the underlying dark matter profile. The halo finder MHF will become part of the open source MLAPM distribution.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/165cf1e36bf070972eb5818e3484832defa15704

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Citations in the corpus

The cosmic baryon cycle and galaxy mass assembly in the FIRE simulations (2016, methodology): “Dark matter halos are identified independently of the skid galaxy definition using the Amiga Halo Finder (AHF; Gill et al. 2004; Knollmann & Knebe 2009), where we use the evolving virial overdensity definition of Bryan & Norman (1998).”
ESCAPE FRACTION OF IONIZING PHOTONS DURING REIONIZATION: EFFECTS DUE TO SUPERNOVA FEEDBACK AND RUNAWAY OB STARS (2014, methodology): “Dark matter (sub) halos are identified using the AMIGA halo finder (AHF, Gill et al. 2004; Knollmann & Knebe 2009).”
NEXUS: Tracing the cosmic web connection (2012, background): “The AHF halo finder is the successor of the MHF halo finder by Gill et al. (2004).”
THE ROLE OF COLD FLOWS IN THE ASSEMBLY OF GALAXY DISKS (2008, methodology): “Galaxies and their parent halos were identified using AHF6 (Knebe et al. 2001; Gill et al. 2004).”
BUDHIES II: a phase-space view of H i gas stripping and star formation quenching in cluster galaxies (2015, methodology): “The halos were found using AHF, a parallelized version of the MHF algorithm of Gill et al. (2004).”
The mass function and average mass-loss rate of dark matter subhaloes (2004, neutral): “…et al. 1998; Moore et al. 1998, 1999; Tormen, Diaferio & Syer 1998; Klypin et al. 1999a,b; Ghigna et al. 2000; Stoehr et al. 2002; De Lucia et al. 2004; Diemand, Moore & Stadel 2004; Gao et al. 2004; Gill et al. 2004a; Gill, Knebe & Gibson 2004b; Kravtsov C© 2005 RAS et al. 2004; Reed et al. 2004).”
The spin and shape of dark matter haloes in the Millennium simulation of a Λ cold dark matter universe (2006, background): “…include Bound Density Maxima (BDM, Klypin et al. 1999), Spline Kernel Interpolative DENMAX (SKID, Weinberg et al. 1997), the AMIGA Halo Finder (AHF, Gill et al. 2004), and Subfind (Springel et al. 2001), which we use below. c© 2006 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–19 The very simple ‘friends-of-friends’…”
The difficulty of getting high escape fractions of ionizing photons from high-redshift galaxies: A view from the FIRE cosmological simulations (2015, methodology): “We use the Amiga Halo Finder (AHF; Gill et al. 2004; Knollmann & Knebe 2009) to identify halos in the simulations.”
REPRODUCING THE STELLAR MASS/HALO MASS RELATION IN SIMULATED ΛCDM GALAXIES: THEORY VERSUS OBSERVATIONAL ESTIMATES (2012, background): “Galaxies and their parent halos were first identified using AHF8 (Gill et al. 2004; Knollmann & Knebe 2009).”
The dependence of dark matter profiles on the stellar-to-halo mass ratio: a prediction for cusps versus cores (2013, methodology): “The main haloes in our simulations were identified using the MPI+OpenMP hybrid halo finderAHF1 (Knollmann & Knebe 2009; Gill et al. 2004).”
Damped Lyman α systems in galaxy formation simulations (2008, methodology): “We start by locating individual dark matter haloes in the simulation using the grid-based code AHF2 (Knebe et al. 2001; Gill et al. 2004).”
The Origin and Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity Relationship for Galaxies: Results from Cosmological N-Body Simulations (2006, methodology): “Galaxies and their parent halos were identified using AHF7 (Knebe et al. 2001; Gill et al. 2004).”
NIHAO project – I. Reproducing the inefficiency of galaxy formation across cosmic time with a large sample of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations (2015, methodology): “Haloes in our zoom-in simulations were identified using the MPI+OpenMP hybrid halo finder AHF2 (Knollmann & Knebe 2009; Gill et al. 2004).”