A Halo Merger Tree Generation and Evaluation Framework

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel framework using Generative Adversarial Networks to generate realistic halo merger trees efficiently, aiding galaxy formation studies.

Contribution

It presents a new GAN-based method for halo merger tree generation that leverages large simulation data with low computational costs.

Findings

Generated trees closely match real simulation data

The framework is computationally efficient

Improves realism of semi-analytic galaxy models

Abstract

Semi-analytic models are best suited to compare galaxy formation and evolution theories with observations. These models rely heavily on halo merger trees, and their realistic features (i.e., no drastic changes on halo mass or jumps on physical locations). Our aim is to provide a new framework for halo merger tree generation that takes advantage of the results of large volume simulations, with a modest computational cost. We treat halo merger tree construction as a matrix generation problem, and propose a Generative Adversarial Network that learns to generate realistic halo merger trees. We evaluate our proposal on merger trees from the EAGLE simulation suite, and show the quality of the generated trees.