Galaxy formation using halo merger histories taken from N-body simulations

Abstract

We develop a hybrid galaxy formation model which uses outputs from an N-body simulation to follow the merger histories (or ``merger trees'') of dark matter halos and treats baryonic processes, such as the cooling of gas within halos and subsequent star formation, using the semi-analytic model of Cole et al. We compare this hybrid model to an otherwise identical model which utilises merger tree realisations generated by a Monte-Carlo algorithm and find that, apart from the limited mass resolution imposed by the N-body particle mass, the only significant differences between the models are due to the known discrepancy between the distribution of halo progenitor masses predicted by extended Press Schechter theory and that found in N-body simulations. We investigate the effect of limited mass resolution on the hybrid model by comparing to a purely semi-analytic model with greatly improved mass resolution. We find that the mass resolution of the simulation we use, which has a particle mass of 1.4x10^10 Msolar/h, is insufficient to produce a reasonable luminosity function for galaxies with magnitudes in the b_J band fainter than -17.