A new calibration method of sub-halo orbital evolution for semi-analytic models

Understand

Understanding the non-linear dynamics of satellite halos (a.k.a.

• "sub-halos") is important for predicting the abundance and distribution of dark matter substructures and satellite galaxies, and for distinguishing among microphysical dark matter models using observations.
• Typically, modeling these dynamics requires large N-body simulations with high resolution.
• Semi-analytic models can provide a more efficient way to describe the key physical processes such as dynamical friction, tidal mass loss, and tidal heating, with only a few free parameters.