The most bound halo particle-galaxy correspondence model: comparison between models with different merger timescales

We develop a galaxy assignment scheme that populates dark matter halos with galaxies by tracing the most bound member particles (MBPs) of simulated halos. Several merger timescale models based on analytic calculations and numerical simulations are adopted as the survival times of mock satellite galaxies. We build mock galaxy samples from halo merger data of the Horizon Run 4 N-body simulation from z = 12–0. We compare group properties and two-point correlation functions (2pCFs) of mock galaxies with those of volume-limited SDSS galaxies, with r-band absolute magnitudes of $M_r-5logh<-21$ and −20 at z = 0. It is found that the MBP-galaxy correspondence scheme reproduces the observed population of SDSS galaxies in massive galaxy groups ($M>{10}^{14}{h}^{-1}{M}_{\odot }$) and the small-scale 2pCF ($r_p<10h^{-1}Mpc$) quite well for the majority of the merger timescale models adopted. The new scheme outperforms the previous subhalo-galaxy correspondence scheme by more than 2σ.