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Sussing merger trees: the Merger Trees Comparison Project

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posted on 2023-06-08, 17:16 authored by Chaichalit Srisawat, Alexander Knebe, Frazer R Pearce, Aurel Schneider, Peter ThomasPeter Thomas, Peter Behroozi, Klaus Dolag, Pascal J Elahi, Jiaxin Han, John Helly, Yipeng Jing, Intae Jung, Jaehyun Lee, Yao-Yuan Mao, Julian Onions, Vicente Rodriguez-Gomez, Dylan Tweed, Sukyoung K Yi
Merger trees follow the growth and merger of dark-matter haloes over cosmic history. As well as giving important insights into the growth of cosmic structure in their own right, they provide an essential backbone to semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. This paper is the first in a series to arise from the Sussing Merger Trees Workshop in which 10 different tree-building algorithms were applied to the same set of halo catalogues and their results compared. Although many of these codes were similar in nature, all algorithms produced distinct results. Our main conclusions are that a useful merger-tree code should possess the following features: (i) the use of particle IDs to match haloes between snapshots; (ii) the ability to skip at least one, and preferably more, snapshots in order to recover subhaloes that are temporarily lost during merging; (iii) the ability to cope with (and ideally smooth out) large, temporary fluctuations in halo mass. Finally, to enable different groups to communicate effectively, we defined a common terminology that we used when discussing merger trees and we encourage others to adopt the same language. We also specified a minimal output format to record the results.

Funding

Astronomy rolling grant; G0278; STFC-SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL; ST/I000976/1

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

ISSN

0035-8711

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Issue

1

Volume

436

Page range

150-162

Department affiliated with

  • Physics and Astronomy Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2014-05-15

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2014-05-15

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2014-05-15

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