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Characterizing tidal features around galaxies in cosmological simulations

Khalid, A.; Brough, S.; Martin, G.; Kimmig, L.; Lagos, C.D.P.; Remus, R.-S.; Martinez-Lombilla, C.

Characterizing tidal features around galaxies in cosmological simulations Thumbnail


Authors

A. Khalid

S. Brough

L. Kimmig

C.D.P. Lagos

R.-S. Remus

C. Martinez-Lombilla



Abstract

Tidal features provide signatures of recent mergers and offer a unique insight into the assembly history of galaxies. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will enable an unprecedentedly large survey of tidal features around millions of galaxies. To decipher the contributions of mergers to galaxy evolution it will be necessary to compare the observed tidal features with theoretical predictions. Therefore, we use cosmological hydrodynamical simulations NewHorizon, eagle, IllustrisTNG, and Magneticum to produce LSST-like mock images of z ∼ 0 galaxies (z ∼ 0.2 for NewHorizon) with $M_{\scriptstyle \star ,\text{ 30 pkpc}}\ge 10^{9.5}$ M$_{\scriptstyle \odot }$. We perform a visual classification to identify tidal features and classify their morphology. We find broadly good agreement between the simulations regarding their overall tidal feature fractions: $f_{\small {\rm NEWHORIZON}}=0.40\pm 0.06$, $f_{\small {\rm EAGLE}}=0.37\pm 0.01$, $f_{\small {\rm TNG}}=0.32\pm 0.01$ and $f_{\small {\rm MAGNETICUM}}=0.32\pm 0.01$, and their specific tidal feature fractions. Furthermore, we find excellent agreement regarding the trends of tidal feature fraction with stellar and halo mass. All simulations agree in predicting that the majority of central galaxies of groups and clusters exhibit at least one tidal feature, while the satellite members rarely show such features. This agreement suggests that gravity is the primary driver of the occurrence of visually-identifiable tidal features in cosmological simulations, rather than subgrid physics or hydrodynamics. All predictions can be verified directly with LSST observations.

Citation

Khalid, A., Brough, S., Martin, G., Kimmig, L., Lagos, C., Remus, R., & Martinez-Lombilla, C. (2024). Characterizing tidal features around galaxies in cosmological simulations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 530(4), 4422–4445. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae1064

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 16, 2024
Online Publication Date Apr 22, 2024
Publication Date May 9, 2024
Deposit Date May 16, 2024
Publicly Available Date May 16, 2024
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 530
Issue 4
Pages 4422–4445
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae1064
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/34618970
Publisher URL https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/530/4/4422/7656432

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