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A light-cone catalogue from the Millennium-XXL simulation: improved spatial interpolation and colour distributions for the DESI BGS

Smith, Alex; Cole, Shaun; Grove, Cameron; Norberg, Peder; Zarrouk, Pauline

A light-cone catalogue from the Millennium-XXL simulation: improved spatial interpolation and colour distributions for the DESI BGS Thumbnail


Authors

Alex Smith alexander.p.smith@durham.ac.uk
PGR Student Master of Science

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Cameron Grove cameron.grove@durham.ac.uk
PGR Student Doctor of Philosophy

Pauline Zarrouk



Abstract

The use of realistic mock galaxy catalogues is essential in the preparation of large galaxy surveys, in order to test and validate theoretical models and to assess systematics. We present an updated version of the mock catalogue constructed from the Millennium-XXL simulation, which uses a halo occupation distribution method to assign galaxies r-band magnitudes and g − r colours. We have made several modifications to the mock to improve the agreement with measurements from the SDSS and GAMA surveys. We find that cubic interpolation, which was used to build the original halo light cone, produces extreme velocities between snapshots. Using linear interpolation improves the correlation function quadrupole measurements on small scales. We also update the g − r colour distributions so that the observed colours better agree with measurements from GAMA data, particularly for faint galaxies. As an example of the science that can be done with the mock, we investigate how the luminosity function depends on environment and colour, and find good agreement with measurements from the GAMA survey. This full-sky mock catalogue is designed for the ongoing Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Bright Galaxy Survey, and is complete to a magnitude limit r = 20.2.

Citation

Smith, A., Cole, S., Grove, C., Norberg, P., & Zarrouk, P. (2022). A light-cone catalogue from the Millennium-XXL simulation: improved spatial interpolation and colour distributions for the DESI BGS. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 516(3), 4529 - 4542. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac2519

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 2, 2022
Online Publication Date Sep 8, 2022
Publication Date 2022-11
Deposit Date Nov 22, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Print ISSN 0035-8711
Electronic ISSN 1365-2966
Publisher Royal Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 516
Issue 3
Pages 4529 - 4542
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac2519

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