Sussing merger trees: the influence of the halo finder
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 study the influence of the underlying halo catalogue upon the r...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
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Oxford University Press
2014
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/42639/ |
| _version_ | 1848796534237298688 |
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| author | Avila, Santiago Knebe, Alexander Pearce, Frazer R. Schneider, Aurel Srisawat, Chaichalit Thomas, Peter A. Behroozi, Peter Elahi, Pascal J. Han, Jiaxin Mao, Yao-Yuan Onions, Julian Rodriguez-Gomez, Vicente Tweed, Dylan |
| author_facet | Avila, Santiago Knebe, Alexander Pearce, Frazer R. Schneider, Aurel Srisawat, Chaichalit Thomas, Peter A. Behroozi, Peter Elahi, Pascal J. Han, Jiaxin Mao, Yao-Yuan Onions, Julian Rodriguez-Gomez, Vicente Tweed, Dylan |
| author_sort | Avila, Santiago |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | 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 study the influence of the underlying halo catalogue upon the resulting trees. We observe that the specifics of halo finding itself greatly influences the constructed merger trees.We find that the choices made to define the halo mass are of prime importance. For instance, amongst many potential options different finders select self-bound objects or spherical regions of defined overdensity, decide whether or not to include substructures within the mass returned and vary in their initial particle selection. The impact of these decisions is seen in tree length (the period of time a particularly halo can be traced back through the simulation), branching ratio (essentially the merger rate of subhaloes) and mass evolution. We therefore conclude that the choice of the underlying halo finder is more relevant to the process of building merger trees than the tree builder itself. We also report on some built-in features of specific merger tree codes that (sometimes) help to improve the quality of the merger trees produced. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:49:30Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-42639 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:49:30Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Oxford University Press |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-426392020-05-04T16:51:15Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/42639/ Sussing merger trees: the influence of the halo finder Avila, Santiago Knebe, Alexander Pearce, Frazer R. Schneider, Aurel Srisawat, Chaichalit Thomas, Peter A. Behroozi, Peter Elahi, Pascal J. Han, Jiaxin Mao, Yao-Yuan Onions, Julian Rodriguez-Gomez, Vicente Tweed, Dylan 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 study the influence of the underlying halo catalogue upon the resulting trees. We observe that the specifics of halo finding itself greatly influences the constructed merger trees.We find that the choices made to define the halo mass are of prime importance. For instance, amongst many potential options different finders select self-bound objects or spherical regions of defined overdensity, decide whether or not to include substructures within the mass returned and vary in their initial particle selection. The impact of these decisions is seen in tree length (the period of time a particularly halo can be traced back through the simulation), branching ratio (essentially the merger rate of subhaloes) and mass evolution. We therefore conclude that the choice of the underlying halo finder is more relevant to the process of building merger trees than the tree builder itself. We also report on some built-in features of specific merger tree codes that (sometimes) help to improve the quality of the merger trees produced. Oxford University Press 2014-07-11 Article PeerReviewed Avila, Santiago, Knebe, Alexander, Pearce, Frazer R., Schneider, Aurel, Srisawat, Chaichalit, Thomas, Peter A., Behroozi, Peter, Elahi, Pascal J., Han, Jiaxin, Mao, Yao-Yuan, Onions, Julian, Rodriguez-Gomez, Vicente and Tweed, Dylan (2014) Sussing merger trees: the influence of the halo finder. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 441 (4). pp. 3488-3501. ISSN 1365-2966 methods: numerical galaxies: evolution galaxies: haloes dark matter https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/stu799 doi:10.1093/mnras/stu799 doi:10.1093/mnras/stu799 |
| spellingShingle | methods: numerical galaxies: evolution galaxies: haloes dark matter Avila, Santiago Knebe, Alexander Pearce, Frazer R. Schneider, Aurel Srisawat, Chaichalit Thomas, Peter A. Behroozi, Peter Elahi, Pascal J. Han, Jiaxin Mao, Yao-Yuan Onions, Julian Rodriguez-Gomez, Vicente Tweed, Dylan Sussing merger trees: the influence of the halo finder |
| title | Sussing merger trees: the influence of the halo finder |
| title_full | Sussing merger trees: the influence of the halo finder |
| title_fullStr | Sussing merger trees: the influence of the halo finder |
| title_full_unstemmed | Sussing merger trees: the influence of the halo finder |
| title_short | Sussing merger trees: the influence of the halo finder |
| title_sort | sussing merger trees: the influence of the halo finder |
| topic | methods: numerical galaxies: evolution galaxies: haloes dark matter |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/42639/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/42639/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/42639/ |