From rest-frame luminosity functions to observer-frame colour distributions: tackling the next challenge in cosmological simulations

Understand

Galaxy spectral energy distributions (SEDs) remain among the most challenging yet informative quantities to reproduce in simulations due to the large and complex mixture of physical processes that shape the radiation output of a galaxy.

• With the increasing number of surveys utilising broadband colours as part of their target selection criteria, the production of realistic SEDs in simulations is necessary for assisting in survey design and interpretation of observations.
• The recent success in reproducing the observed luminosity functions (LF) from far-UV to far-IR, using the state-of-the-art semi-analytic model \shark\ and the SED generator \prospect, represents a critical step towards better galaxy colour predictions.
• We show that with \shark\ and \prospect\ we can closely reproduce the optical colour distributions observed in the panchromatic GAMA survey.