Galaxy catalogs from the SAGE Semi-Analytic Model calibrated on THE THREE HUNDRED hydrodynamical simulations: A method to push the limits toward lower mass galaxies in dark matter only clusters simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to generate galaxy catalogs from dark matter only simulations by calibrating a semi-analytical model, enabling studies of faint galaxies in massive clusters with improved mass resolution.

Contribution

It presents a calibration approach for the SAGE semi-analytical model using hydrodynamical simulations to produce realistic galaxy catalogs from dark matter only simulations.

Findings

Calibrated SAGE model reproduces hydrodynamical simulation results.

Enables galaxy property predictions in high-resolution dark matter simulations.

Facilitates studies of low-mass galaxies in massive clusters.

Abstract

The new generation of upcoming deep photometric and spectroscopic surveys will allow us to measure the astrophysical properties of faint galaxies in massive clusters. This would demand to produce simulations of galaxy clusters with better mass resolution than the ones available today if we want to make comparisons between the upcoming observations and predictions of cosmological models. But producing full-physics hydrodynamical simulations of the most massive clusters is not an easy task. This would involve billions of computational elements to reliably resolve low mass galaxies similar to those measured in observations. On the other hand, dark matter only simulations of cluster size halos can be done with much larger mass resolution but at the cost of having to apply a model that populate galaxies within each of the subhalos in these simulations. In this paper we present the results of a new set of dark matter only simulations with different mass resolutions within the THE THREE HUNDRED project. We have generated catalogs of galaxies with stellar and luminosity properties by applying the SAGE Semi-Analytical Model of galaxy formation. To obtain the catalogs consistent with the results from hydrodynamical simulations, the internal physical parameters of SAGE were calibrated with the Particle Swarm Optimization method using a subset of full-physics runs with the same mass resolution than the dark matter only ones.