The Last Journey. II. SMACC -- Subhalo Mass-loss Analysis using Core Catalogs

TL;DR

SMACC introduces a novel mass-loss modeling approach for subhalo analysis using core catalogs, enabling efficient and accurate tracking of substructure evolution without costly subhalo finding algorithms.

Contribution

The paper presents SMACC, a new method that models subhalo mass-loss using core catalogs, reducing computational costs and improving substructure analysis accuracy.

Findings

SMACC accurately describes halo substructure evolution.

Validation shows excellent performance across different simulation resolutions.

Core catalogs with mass information facilitate galaxy distribution modeling.

Abstract

This paper introduces SMACC -- Subhalo Mass-loss Analysis using Core Catalogs. SMACC adds a mass model to substructure merger trees based on halo "core tracking." Our approach avoids the need for running expensive subhalo finding algorithms and instead uses subhalo mass-loss modeling to assign masses to halo cores. We present details of the SMACC methodology and demonstrate its excellent performance in describing halo substructure and its evolution. Validation of the approach is carried out using cosmological simulations at significantly different resolutions. We apply SMACC to the 1.24 trillion-particle Last Journey simulation and construct core catalogs with the additional mass information. These catalogs can be readily used as input to semi-analytic models or subhalo abundance matching approaches to determine approximate galaxy distributions, as well as for in-depth studies of small-scale structure evolution.