Coupling Semi-Analytic and N-body Galaxies (CoSANG) for cosmological stellar halo simulations I- Methods and the structure of dark matter halos

TL;DR

This paper introduces CoSANG, a hybrid simulation model combining semi-analytic and N-body methods to improve the realism of cosmological stellar halo simulations while reducing computational costs.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel live, self-consistent coupling approach that integrates baryonic effects into N-body simulations, enhancing accuracy over traditional semi-analytic models.

Findings

CoSANG reduces subhalo counts near halo centers.

It produces lower $V_{max}$ values, indicating less massive subhaloes.

Halo shapes are more elongated with CoSANG, especially in early-forming halos.

Abstract

We present CoSANG (Coupling Semi-Analytic and N-body Galaxies), a new hybrid model for cosmological dark matter and stellar halo simulations. In this approach a collisionless model (Gadget3) is used for gravitational interactions while a coupled semi-analytic model (SAGE) calculates baryonic effects at each time-step. This live self-consistent interaction at each time-step is the key difference between CoSANG and traditional semi-analytic models that are mainly used for post-processing. By accounting for the gravitational effect of the baryons, CoSANG can overcome some of the deficiencies of pure N-body simulations, while being less computationally expensive than hydrodynamic simulations. Moreover CoSANG can produce stellar halo populations via tagging tracer dark matter particles. We demonstrate the performance and dynamical accuracy of this approach using both controlled test simulations and a set of three cosmological zoom-in simulations of Milky Way (MW) mass halos. We simulate each target halo both without the coupling (dark matter only, hereafter DMO) and with the coupling (CoSANG). We compare the internal structure (subhalo distribution, shape and orientation) of the halos. The following changes are observed in the CoSANG model compared to the DMO model: 1) the total number of subhaloes close to the center of the halo is reduced, 2) the $V_{\mathrm{max}}$ distribution peaks at a lower value and lies below the DMO model, 3) the axis ratio is smaller. The difference between DMO and CoSANG simulations is more significant in early forming halos.