Impact of numerical (artificial) disruption on the satellite stellar mass function

Quantify the impact of numerical disruption of subhaloes in cosmological simulations on the satellite stellar mass function, especially at the low-mass end where unresolved subhaloes may bias satellite counts and necessitate orphan modeling.

Background

The authors note that recent work suggests numerical disruption is no longer a major concern for the subhalo mass function in state-of-the-art dark-matter-only simulations. However, whether such numerical effects bias the satellite stellar mass function remains unresolved.

This uncertainty bears directly on the treatment of orphan galaxies in semi-analytic and empirical models, since discarding or retaining systems whose subhaloes fall below resolution limits can respectively underpredict or overpredict the abundances of low-mass satellites.