skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Haloes gone MAD14: The Halo-Finder Comparison Project

Journal Article · · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

We present a detailed comparison of fundamental dark matter halo properties retrieved by a substantial number of different halo finders. These codes span a wide range of techniques including friends-of-friends, spherical-overdensity and phase-space-based algorithms. We further introduce a robust (and publicly available) suite of test scenarios that allow halo finder developers to compare the performance of their codes against those presented here. This set includes mock haloes containing various levels and distributions of substructure at a range of resolutions as well as a cosmological simulation of the large-scale structure of the universe. All the halo-finding codes tested could successfully recover the spatial location of our mock haloes. They further returned lists of particles (potentially) belonging to the object that led to coinciding values for the maximum of the circular velocity profile and the radius where it is reached. All the finders based in configuration space struggled to recover substructure that was located close to the centre of the host halo, and the radial dependence of the mass recovered varies from finder to finder. Those finders based in phase space could resolve central substructure although they found difficulties in accurately recovering its properties. Through a resolution study we found that most of the finders could not reliably recover substructure containing fewer than 30–40 particles. However, also here the phase-space finders excelled by resolving substructure down to 10–20 particles. By comparing the halo finders using a high-resolution cosmological volume, we found that they agree remarkably well on fundamental properties of astrophysical significance (e.g. mass, position, velocity and peak of the rotation curve). We further suggest to utilize the peak of the rotation curve, vmax, as a proxy for mass, given the arbitrariness in defining a proper halo edge.

Research Organization:
Stanford Univ., CA (United States); UT-Battelle LLC/ORNL, Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Krell Institute, Ames, IA (United States); Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-76SF00515; AC05-00OR22725; FG02-97ER25308; W-7405-ENG-36
OSTI ID:
1564795
Journal Information:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 415, Issue 3; ISSN 0035-8711
Publisher:
Royal Astronomical Society
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (81)

E pur si muove: Galilean-invariant cosmological hydrodynamical simulations on a moving mesh journal January 2010
FLASH: An Adaptive Mesh Hydrodynamics Code for Modeling Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes journal November 2000
Comparing AMR and SPH Cosmological Simulations. I. Dark Matter and Adiabatic Simulations
  • O’Shea, Brian W.; Nagamine, Kentaro; Springel, Volker
  • The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 160, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1086/432645
journal September 2005
The Structure of Cold Dark Matter Halos journal May 1996
A Universal Density Profile from Hierarchical Clustering journal December 1997
HOP: A New Group‐finding Algorithm for N ‐Body Simulations journal May 1998
Large-scale bias and the peak background split journal September 1999
voboz: an almost-parameter-free halo-finding algorithm journal February 2005
Towards optimal parallel PM N-body codes: PMFAST journal April 2005
The diversity and similarity of simulated cold dark matter haloes: Diversity and similarity of simulated CDM haloes journal December 2009
The accuracy of subhalo detection: The accuracy of subhalo detection journal October 2010
Quantifying the heart of darkness with GHALO - a multibillion particle simulation of a galactic halo journal September 2009
The mass function of dark matter haloes journal February 2001
The cosmological simulation code gadget-2 journal December 2005
Toward a Halo Mass Function for Precision Cosmology: The Limits of Universality journal December 2008
The evolution of substructure — I. A new identification method journal June 2004
Shape, Spin, and Baryon Fraction of Clusters in the MareNostrum Universe journal July 2007
Early Supersymmetric Cold Dark Matter Substructure journal September 2006
On the shortest spanning subtree of a graph and the traveling salesman problem journal January 1956
Multimass spherical structure models for N-body simulations journal May 2008
Dark matter halo abundances, clustering and assembly histories at high redshift journal April 2008
N-body realizations of compound galaxies journal May 1993
The Bound Mass of Substructures in Dark Matter Halos journal April 2007
Investigating the influence of magnetic fields upon structure formation with amiga- a c code for cosmological magnetohydrodynamics journal March 2010
The mass of a halo journal February 2001
Galactic halo cusp-core: tidal compression in mergers journal May 2003
Ahf: Amiga'S halo Finder journal May 2009
The cosmic code comparison project journal October 2008
GADGET: a code for collisionless and gasdynamical cosmological simulations journal April 2001
The Tree Particle‐Mesh N ‐Body Gravity Solver journal June 2000
Building merger trees from cosmological N -body simulations : Towards improving galaxy formation models using subhaloes journal August 2009
Galaxies in N ‐Body Simulations: Overcoming the Overmerging Problem journal May 1999
GOTPM: a parallel hybrid particle-mesh treecode journal February 2004
A new multidimensional adaptive mesh refinement hydro + gravity cosmological code journal August 2004
Fast identification of bound structures in large N-body simulations journal December 2005
The Structure of Halos: Implications for Group and Cluster Cosmology journal February 2009
An O(logn) parallel connectivity algorithm journal March 1982
Cosmological N-Body Simulations journal January 1991
The importance of tides for the Local Group dwarf spheroidals journal March 2006
A New Halo‐finding Method for N ‐Body Simulations journal March 2006
On the effects of resolution in dissipationless cosmological simulations journal September 2000
Merger rates in hierarchical models of galaxy formation – II. Comparison with N-body simulations journal December 1994
Tidal evolution of discy dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way potential: the formation of dwarf spheroidals journal August 2009
Hydra: an Adaptive-Mesh Implementation of P 3M-SPH journal October 1995
Multi-level adaptive particle mesh (MLAPM): a C code for cosmological simulations journal August 2001
Determining orbits for the Milky Way's dwarfs: Orbits for the Milky Way's dwarfs journal May 2010
Simulations of X-ray clusters journal August 1995
Cosmological hydrodynamics with adaptive mesh refinement: A new high resolution code called RAMSES journal April 2002
Improved numerical modelling of clusters of galaxies journal March 1995
Formation of Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies by Self-Similar Gravitational Condensation journal February 1974
Populating a cluster of galaxies - I. Results at \fontshape{it}{z}=0 journal December 2001
The dynamical structure of dark matter haloes journal June 2008
Precision Determination of the Mass Function of Dark Matter Halos journal August 2006
The origin and implications of dark matter anisotropic cosmic infall on ≈ L haloes journal August 2004
Parallel hop: a Scalable halo Finder for Massive Cosmological data sets journal October 2010
An analytical model for spherical galaxies and bulges journal June 1990
Collapse Barriers and halo Abundance: Testing the Excursion set Ansatz journal April 2009
A hierarchical O(N log N) force-calculation algorithm journal December 1986
Properties of spherical galaxies and clusters with an NFW density profile journal February 2001
A test suite for quantitative comparison of hydrodynamic codes in astrophysics journal November 2008
The Santa Barbara Cluster Comparison Project: A Comparison of Cosmological Hydrodynamics Solutions journal November 1999
A Linear Moving Adaptive Particle-Mesh N-Body Algorithm journal September 1995
The Mass Function journal December 2002
Fundamental differences between SPH and grid methods: Simulating fluids using SPH and grid techniques journal August 2007
Profiles of dark haloes: evolution, scatter and environment journal March 2001
The Structural Evolution of Substructure journal February 2003
Multidimensional density estimation and phase-space structure of dark matter haloes journal November 2006
The Adaptive TreePM: an adaptive resolution code for cosmological N -body simulations journal July 2009
Phase-space structures - II. Hierarchical Structure Finder journal July 2009
Hybrid petacomputing meets cosmology: The Roadrunner Universe project journal July 2009
Examining Subgrid Models of Supermassive Black Holes in Cosmological Simulation journal October 2010
Cold dark matter. 1: The formation of dark halos journal December 1994
Adaptive Refinement Tree: A New High‐Resolution N ‐Body Code for Cosmological Simulations
  • Kravtsov, Andrey V.; Klypin, Anatoly A.; Khokhlov, Alexei M.
  • The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Vol. 111, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1086/313015
journal July 1997
ASOHF: a new adaptive spherical overdensity halo finder journal September 2010
Softened Lagrangian hydrodynamics for cosmology journal April 1995
The Halo Mass Function: High‐Redshift Evolution and Universality journal December 2007
Thin, thick and dark discs in ΛCDM journal September 2008
Numerical estimation of densities journal January 2005
Generating Equilibrium Dark Matter Halos: Inadequacies of the Local Maxwellian Approximation journal January 2004
The evolution of large-scale structure in a universe dominated by cold dark matter journal May 1985
On the Problem of Distribution in Globular Star Clusters: (Plate 8.) journal March 1911

Similar Records

Haloes gone MAD: The Halo-Finder Comparison Project
Journal Article · Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2011 · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society · OSTI ID:1564795

THE ROCKSTAR PHASE-SPACE TEMPORAL HALO FINDER AND THE VELOCITY OFFSETS OF CLUSTER CORES
Journal Article · Thu Jan 10 00:00:00 EST 2013 · Astrophysical Journal · OSTI ID:1564795

Data-Parallel Halo Finder Operator in PISTON
Conference · Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2012 · OSTI ID:1564795

Related Subjects