Related papers: Halo Merger Tree Comparison: Impact on Galaxy Form…
A halo merger tree forms the essential backbone of a semi-analytic model for galaxy formation and evolution. Recent studies have pointed out that extracting merger trees from numerical simulations of structure formation is non-trivial;…
Merger tree codes are routinely used to follow the growth and merger of dark matter haloes in simulations of cosmic structure formation. Whereas in Srisawat et. al. we compared the trees built using a wide variety of such codes here we…
Galaxy formation and evolution models, such as semi-analytic models, are powerful theoretical tools for predicting how galaxies evolve across cosmic time. These models follow the evolution of galaxies based on the halo assembly histories…
Halo merger trees describe the hierarchical mass assembly of dark matter haloes, and are the backbone for modeling galaxy formation and evolution. Merger trees constructed using Monte Carlo algorithms based on the extended Press-Schechter…
Semi-analytic models are best suited to compare galaxy formation and evolution theories with observations. These models rely heavily on halo merger trees, and their realistic features (i.e., no drastic changes on halo mass or jumps on…
Merging haloes with similar masses (i.e., major mergers) pose significant challenges for halo finders. We compare five halo finding algorithms' (AHF, HBT, Rockstar, SubFind, and VELOCIraptor) recovery of halo properties for both isolated…
We introduce gbpTrees: an algorithm for constructing merger trees from cosmological simulations, designed to identify and correct for pathological cases introduced by errors or ambiguities in the halo finding process. gbpTrees is built upon…
We present a new algorithm for generating merger trees and halo catalogs which explicitly ensures consistency of halo properties (mass, position, and velocity) across timesteps. Our algorithm has demonstrated the ability to improve both the…
Merger trees are routinely used to follow the growth and merging history of dark matter haloes and subhaloes in simulations of cosmic structure formation. Srisawat et al. (2013) compared a wide range of merger-tree-building codes. Here we…
A method of deriving and using merging history trees of dark matter galaxy haloes directly from pure gravity N-body simulations is presented. This combines the full non-linearity of N-body simulations with the flexibility of the…
When following the growth of structure in the Universe, we propose replacing merger trees with merger graphs, in which haloes can both merge and split into separate pieces. We show that this leads to smoother mass growth and eliminates…
Identifying galaxies in hydrodynamical simulations is a difficult task, particularly in regions of high density such as galaxy groups and clusters. We present a new scale-free shape-independent algorithm to robustly and accurately identify…
We introduce a novel halo/galaxy matching technique between two cosmological simulations with different resolutions, which utilizes the positions and masses of halos along their subhalo merger tree. With this tool, we conduct a study of…
We present TreeFrog, a massively parallel halo merger tree builder that is capable comparing different halo catalogues and producing halo merger trees. The code is written in c++11, use the MPI and OpenMP API's for parallelisation, and…
A key ingredient for semi-analytic models (SAMs) of galaxy formation is the mass assembly history of haloes, encoded in a tree structure. The most commonly used method to construct halo merger histories is based on the outcomes of…
We developed a new method to extract halo merger rates from the Millennium Simulation. First, by removing superfluous mergers that are artifacts of the FOF halo finder, we find a lower merger rate compared to previous work. The reductions…
Merger trees harvested from cosmological $N$-body simulations encode the assembly histories of dark matter halos over cosmic time, and are a fundamental component of semi-analytical models (SAMs) of galaxy formation. The ability to compare…
We present a new Monte-Carlo algorithm to generate merger trees describing the formation history of dark matter halos. The algorithm is a modification of the algorithm of Cole et al (2000) used in the GALFORM semi-analytic galaxy formation…
Modelling the growth histories of specific galaxies often involves generating the entire population of objects that arise in a given cosmology and selecting systems with appropriate properties. This approach is highly inefficient when…
The cosmic web plays a major role in the formation and evolution of galaxies and defines, to a large extent, their properties. However, the relation between galaxies and environment is still not well understood. Here we present a machine…