Lightcone mock catalogues from semi-analytic models of galaxy formation – I. Construction and application to the BzK colour selection

By A. Merson, C. Baugh, John C. Helly, V. Gonzalez-Perez, Shaun Cole, R. Bielby, P. Norberg, Carlos S. Frenk, A. Benson, Richard G. Bower and 7 more. 2012

142 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We introduce a method for constructing end-to-end mock galaxy catalogues using a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation, applied to the halo merger trees extracted from a cosmological N-body simulation. The mocks that we construct are lightcone catalogues, in which a galaxy is placed according to the epoch at which it first enters the past lightcone of the observer, and incorporate the evolution of galaxy properties with cosmic time. We determine the position between the snapshot outputs at which a galaxy enters the observer's lightcone by interpolation. As an application, we consider the effectiveness of the BzK colour selection technique, which was designed to isolate galaxies in the redshift interval 1.4 < z < 2.5. The mock catalogue is in reasonable agreement with the observed number counts of all BzK galaxies, as well as with the observed counts of the subsample of BzKs that are star-forming galaxies. We predict that over 75 per cent of the model galaxies with KAB ≤ 23, and 1.4 < z < 2.5, are selected by the BzK technique. Interloper galaxies, outside the intended redshift range, are predicted to dominate bright samples of BzK galaxies (i.e. with KAB ≤ 21). Fainter K-band cuts are necessary to reduce the predicted interloper fraction. We also show that shallow B-band photometry can lead to confusion in classifying BzK galaxies as being star forming or passively evolving. Overall, we conclude that the BzK colour selection technique is capable of providing a sample of galaxies that is representative of the 1.4 < z < 2.5 galaxy population.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9ba5a1c75de614cc65730c98c777765233df5ee2

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Citations in the corpus

A unified multiwavelength model of galaxy formation (2015, methodology): “The halo merger trees are constructed using the method described in Merson et al. (2013) and Jiang et al. (2014).”
ANCIENT LIGHT FROM YOUNG COSMIC CITIES: PHYSICAL AND OBSERVATIONAL SIGNATURES OF GALAXY PROTO-CLUSTERS (2013, background): “…that the abundances, redshift distributions, clustering,and SFRs of Lyman break galaxies (LBGs), star-forming galaxies (BXs), and distant red galaxies are basically reproduce (see also Merson et al. 2013, for a comparison of the Durham galaxy model with observations for BzK-selected galaxies).”
How sensitive are predicted galaxy luminosities to the choice of stellar population synthesis model (2013, methodology): “This new method is similar to that described in Merson et al. (2013) but diﬀers in two points: (i) When determining the main progenitor for each sub-find sub-group, the new scheme tries to identify the most bound “core” of dark matter particles, rather than the most massive one.”