1206.4049 (Alexander I. Merson et al.)

Lightcone mock catalogues from semi-analytic models of galaxy formation - I. Construction and application to the BzK colour selection    [PDF]

Alexander I. Merson, Carlton M. Baugh, John C. Helly, Violeta Gonzalez-Perez, Shaun Cole, Richard Bielby, Peder Norberg, Carlos S. Frenk, Andrew J. Benson, Richard G. Bower, Cedric G. Lacey, Claudia del P. Lagos

We introduce a method for constructing end-to-end mock galaxy catalogues using a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation, applied to the halo merger trees extracted from a cosmological N-body simulation. The mocks that we construct are lightcone catalogues, in which a galaxy is placed according to the epoch at which it first enters the past lightcone of the observer, and incorporate the evolution of galaxy properties with cosmic time. We determine the position between the snapshot outputs at which a galaxy enters the observer's lightcone by interpolation. As an application, we consider the effectiveness of the BzK colour selection technique, which was designed to isolate galaxies in the redshift interval 1.4View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.4049