The New Numerical Galaxy Catalog ($\nu^2$GC): An Updated Semi-analytic Model of Galaxy and AGN with Large Cosmological N-body Simulation

Understand

We present a new cosmological galaxy formation model, $\nu^2$GC, as an updated version of our previous model $\nu$GC.

• We adopt the so-called "semi-analytic" approach, in which the formation history of dark matter halos is computed by ${\it N}$-body simulations, while the baryon physics such as gas cooling, star formation and supernova feedback are simply modeled by phenomenological equations.
• Major updates of the model are as follows: (1) the merger trees of dark matter halos are constructed in state-of-the-art ${\it N}$-body simulations, (2) we introduce the formation and evolution process of supermassive black holes and the suppression of gas cooling due to active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity, (3) we include heating of the intergalactic gas by the cosmic UV background, and (4) we tune some free parameters related to the astrophysical processes using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method.
• Our ${\it N}$-body simulations of dark matter halos have unprecedented box size and mass resolution (the largest simulation contains 550 billion particles in a 1.12 Gpc/h box), enabling the study of much smaller and rarer objects.