GalMod: a Galactic synthesis population model

TL;DR

GalMod is a comprehensive galaxy population synthesis model that generates detailed mock catalogs, including kinematics and extinction, for the Milky Way and external galaxies, integrating complex stellar populations and structures.

Contribution

It introduces an enhanced, flexible galaxy model with new features like a central bar, detailed bulge, and spiral arms, enabling full sky simulations and advanced extinction modeling.

Findings

Successfully generates synthetic star catalogs with detailed kinematics.

Incorporates complex galactic structures and extinction effects.

Provides a publicly accessible web tool for galaxy simulations.

Abstract

We present a new Galaxy population synthesis Model (GalMod). GalMod is a star-count model featuring an asymmetric bar/bulge as well as spiral arms and related extinction. The model, initially introduced in Pasetto et al. (2016b), has been here completed with a central bar, a new bulge description, new disk vertical profiles and several new bolometric corrections. The model can generate synthetic mock catalogs of visible portions of the Milky Way (MW), external galaxies like M31, or N-body simulation initial conditions. At any given time, e.g., a chosen age of the Galaxy, the model contains a sum of discrete stellar populations, namely bulge/bar, disk, halo. These populations are in turn the sum of different components: the disk is the sum of spiral arms, thin disks, a thick disk, and various gas components, while the halo is the sum of a stellar component, a hot coronal gas, and a dark matter component. The Galactic potential is computed from these population density profiles and used to generate detailed kinematics by considering up to the first four moments of the collisionless Boltzmann equation. The same density profiles are then used to define the observed color-magnitude diagrams in a user-defined field of view from an arbitrary solar location. Several photometric systems have been included and made available on-line and no limits on the size of the field of view are imposed thus allowing full sky simulations, too. Finally, we model the extinction adopting a dust model with advanced ray-tracing solutions. The model's web page (and tutorial) can be accessed at www.GalMod.org.