Galaxies going MAD: The Galaxy-Finder Comparison Project
Alexander Knebe, Noam I. Libeskind, Frazer Pearce, Peter Behroozi,, Javier Casado, Klaus Dolag, Rosa Dominguez-Tenreiro, Pascal Elahi, Hanni Lux,, Stuart I. Muldrew, Julian Onions

TL;DR
This paper compares various galaxy object finders in complex simulations including baryonic physics, highlighting their agreement on dark matter and stellar components but disparities in diffuse gas content due to different unbinding procedures.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive comparison of galaxy finders applied to hydrodynamical simulations, emphasizing the importance of gas treatment in halo identification.
Findings
High agreement on dark matter and stellar components across codes
Significant disparities in diffuse gas content among finders
Differences primarily due to unbinding procedures for thermal energy
Abstract
With the ever increasing size and complexity of fully self-consistent simulations of galaxy formation within the framework of the cosmic web, the demands upon object finders for these simulations has simultaneously grown. To this extent we initiated the Halo Finder Comparison Project that gathered together all the experts in the field and has so far led to two comparison papers, one for dark matter field haloes (Knebe et al. 2011), and one for dark matter subhaloes (Onions et al. 2012). However, as state-of-the-art simulation codes are perfectly capable of not only following the formation and evolution of dark matter but also account for baryonic physics (e.g. hydrodynamics, star formation, feedback) object finders should also be capable of taking these additional processes into consideration. Here we report on a comparison of codes as applied to the Constrained Local UniversE…
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