Beecroft Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology

Abstract:

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>We present <jats:monospace>CoLoRe</jats:monospace>, a public software package to efficiently generate synthetic realisations of multiple cosmological surveys. <jats:monospace>CoLoRe</jats:monospace> can simulate the growth of structure with different degrees of accuracy, with the current implementation supporting lognormal fields, first, and second order Lagrangian perturbation theory. <jats:monospace>CoLoRe</jats:monospace> simulates the density field on an all-sky light-cone up to a desired maximum redshift, and uses it to generate multiple 2D and 3D maps: galaxy positions and velocities, lensing (shear, magnification, convergence), integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, line intensity mapping, and line of sight skewers for simulations of the Lyman-<jats:italic>α</jats:italic> forest. We test the accuracy of the simulated maps against analytical theoretical predictions, and showcase its performance with a multi-survey simulation including DESI galaxies and quasars, LSST galaxies and lensing, and SKA intensity mapping and radio galaxies. We expect <jats:monospace>CoLoRe</jats:monospace> to be particularly useful in studies aiming to characterise the impact of systematics in multi-experiment analyses, quantify the covariance between different datasets, and test cross-correlation pipelines for near-future surveys.</jats:p>

Abstract:

We explore how observations relate to the physical properties of the emitting galaxies by post-processing a pair of merging z ∼ 2 galaxies from the cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation NEWHORIZON, using LCARS (Light from Cloudy Added to RAMSES) to encode the physical properties of the simulated galaxy into H α emission line. By carrying out mock observations and analysis on these data cubes, we ascertain which physical properties of the galaxy will be recoverable with the HARMONI spectrograph on the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). We are able to estimate the galaxy’s star formation rate and dynamical mass to a reasonable degree of accuracy, with values within a factor of 1.81 and 1.38 of the true value. The kinematic structure of the galaxy is also recovered in mock observations. Furthermore, we are able to recover radial profiles of the velocity dispersion and are therefore able to calculate how the dynamical ratio varies as a function of distance from the galaxy centre. Finally, we show that when calculated on galaxy scales the dynamical ratio does not always provide a reliable measure of a galaxy’s stability against gravity or act as an indicator of a minor merger.