Search

Realistic lightcone mocks are important in the clustering analyses of large galaxy surveys. For simulations where only the snapshots are available, it is common to create approximate lightcones by joining together the snapshots in spherical shells. We assess the two-point clustering measurements of central galaxies in approximate lightcones built from the Millennium-XXL simulation, which are constructed using different numbers of snapshots. The monopole and quadrupole of the real-space correlation function is strongly boosted on small scales below 1 Mpc/h, due to some galaxies being duplicated at the boundaries between snapshots in the lightcone. When more snapshots are used, the total number of duplicated galaxies is approximately constant, but they are pushed to smaller separations. The effect of this in redshift space is small, as long as the snapshots are cut into shells in real space. Randomly removing duplicated galaxies is able to reduce the excess clustering signal. Including satellite galaxies will reduce the impact of the duplicates, since many small-scale pairs come from satellites in the same halo. Galaxies that are missing from the lightcone at the boundaries can be added to the lightcone by having a small overlap between each shell. This effect will impact analyses that use very small-scale clustering measurements, and when using mocks to test the impact of fibre collisions., 10 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

We characterize the selection cuts and clustering properties of a magnitude-limited sample of bright galaxies that is part of the Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) using the ninth data release of the Legacy Imaging Surveys (DR9). We describe changes in the DR9 selection compared to the DR8 one and we also compare the DR9 selection in three distinct regions: BASS/MzLS in the north Galactic Cap (NGC), DECaLS in the NGC, and DECaLS in the south Galactic Cap (SGC). We investigate the systematics associated with the selection and assess its completeness by matching the BGS targets with the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. We measure the angular clustering for the overall bright sample (rmag ≤ 19.5) and as function of apparent magnitude and colour. This enables to determine the clustering strength r0 and slope γ by fitting a power-law model that can be used to generate accurate mock catalogues for this tracer. We use a counts-in-cells technique to explore higher order statistics and cross-correlations with external spectroscopic data sets in order to check the evolution of the clustering with redshift and the redshift distribution of the BGS targets using clustering redshifts. While this work validates the properties of the BGS bright targets, the final target selection pipeline and clustering properties of the entire DESI BGS will be fully characterized and validated with the spectroscopic data of Survey Validation. © 2021 The Author(s)., PZ, OR-M, SC, PN, and CB acknowledge support from the Science Technology Facilities Council through ST/P000541/1 andST/T000244/1. OR-M is supported by the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACyT) through grant No. 297228/440775 and funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 734374. JM gratefully acknowledges support from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics under Award Number DESC0020086 and from the National Science Foundation under grant AST-1616414. Authors want to thank the GAMA collaboration for early access to GAMA DR4 data for this work. Some of the results in this paper have been derived using the healpy and HEALPIX package. We acknowledge the usage of the HyperLeda database (http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr).This work also made extensive use of the NASA Astrophysics Data System and of the astro-ph preprint archive at arXiv.org. This work used the DiRAC@Durham facility managed by the Institute for Computational Cosmology on behalf of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility (www.dirac.ac.uk). The equipment was funded by BEIS capital funding via STFC capital grants ST/K00042X/1, ST/P002293/1, and ST/R002371/1, Durham University and STFC operations grant ST/R000832/1. DiRAC is part of the National e-Infrastructure. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). NERSC is a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. This research is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH1123, and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility under the same contract; additional support for DESI is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences under Contract No. AST-0950945 to the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory; the Science and Technologies Facilities Council of the United Kingdom; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; the Heising-Simons Foundation; the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA); the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico; the Ministry of Economy of Spain, and by the DESI Member Institutions. The authors are honored to be permitted to conduct astronomical research on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak), a mountain with particular significance to the Tohono O’odham Nation., With funding from the Spanish government through the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation SEV-2017-0709.

Sparse regression algorithms have been proposed as the appropriate framework to model the governing equations of a system from data, without needing prior knowledge of the underlying physics. In this work, we use sparse regression to build an accurate and explainable model of the stellar mass of central galaxies given properties of their host dark matter (DM) halo. Our data set comprises 9,521 central galaxies from the EAGLE hydrodynamic simulation. By matching the host halos to a DM-only simulation, we collect the halo mass and specific angular momentum at present time and for their main progenitors in 10 redshift bins from $z=0$ to $z=4$. The principal component of our governing equation is a third-order polynomial of the host halo mass, which models the stellar-mass halo-mass relation. The scatter about this relation is driven by the halo mass evolution and is captured by second and third-order correlations of the halo mass evolution with the present halo mass. An advantage of sparse regression approaches is that unnecessary terms are removed. Although we include information on halo specific angular momentum, these parameters are discarded by our methodology. This suggests that halo angular momentum has little connection to galaxy formation efficiency. Our model has a root mean square error (RMSE) of $0.167 \log_{10}(M^*/M_\odot)$, and accurately reproduces both the stellar mass function and central galaxy correlation function of EAGLE. The methodology appears to be an encouraging approach for populating the halos of DM-only simulations with galaxies, and we discuss the next steps that are required., Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures

4MOST is a new high-multiplex, wide-field spectroscopic survey facility under construction for ESO's 4m-VISTA telescope at Paranal, Chile. Its key specifications are: a large field of view of 4.4 square degrees, a high multiplex fibre positioner based on the tilting spine principle that positions 2436 science fibres in the focal surface of which 1624 fibres go to two low-resolution optical spectrographs (R = lambda/Delta lambda similar to 6500) and 812 fibres transfer light to the high-resolution optical spectrograph (R similar to 20,000). Currently, almost all subsystems are completed and full testing in Europe will be finished in spring 2023, after which 4MOST will be shipped to Chile. An overview is given of instrument construction and capabilities, the planned science of the consortium and the recently selected community programmes, and the unique operational scheme of 4MOST.

The use of realistic mock galaxy catalogues is essential in the preparation of large galaxy surveys, in order to test and validate theoretical models and to assess systematics. We present an updated version of the mock catalogue constructed from the Millennium-XXL simulation, which uses a halo occupation distribution (HOD) method to assign galaxies r-band magnitudes and g-r colours. We have made several modifications to the mock to improve the agreement with measurements from the SDSS and GAMA surveys. We find that cubic interpolation, which was used to build the original halo lightcone, produces extreme velocities between snapshots. Using linear interpolation improves the correlation function quadrupole measurements on small scales. We also update the g-r colour distributions so that the observed colours better agree with measurements from GAMA data, particularly for faint galaxies. As an example of the science that can be done with the mock, we investigate how the luminosity function depends on environment and colour, and find good agreement with measurements from the GAMA survey. This full-sky mock catalogue is designed for the ongoing Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS), and is complete to a magnitude limit r=20.2., 15 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

In Galaxy And Mass Assembly Data Release 4 (GAMA DR4), we make available our full spectroscopic redshift sample. This includes 248682 galaxy spectra, and, in combination with earlier surveys, results in 330542 redshifts across five sky regions covering ~250deg^2. The redshift density, is the highest available over such a sustained area, has exceptionally high completeness (95 per cent to r_KIDS=19.65mag), and is well suited for the study of galaxy mergers, galaxy groups, and the low redshift (z, Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. GAMA Data Release 4 is available at: http://www.gama-survey.org/dr4/

Analysis of large galaxy surveys requires confidence in the robustness of numerical simulation methods. The simulations are used to construct mock galaxy catalogs to validate data analysis pipelines and identify potential systematics. We compare three $N$-body simulation codes, ABACUS, GADGET, and SWIFT, to investigate the regimes in which their results agree. We run $N$-body simulations at three different mass resolutions, $6.25\times10^{8}$, $2.11\times10^{9}$, and $5.00\times10^{9}~h^{-1}$M$_{\odot}$, matching phases to reduce the noise within the comparisons. We find systematic errors in the halo clustering between different codes are smaller than the DESI statistical error for $s > 20\, h^{-1}$Mpc in the correlation function in redshift space. Through the resolution comparison we find that simulations run with a mass resolution of $2.1\times10^{9}~h^{-1}$M$_{\odot}$ are sufficiently converged for systematic effects in the halo clustering to be smaller than the DESI statistical error at scales larger than $20 \, h^{-1}$Mpc. These findings show that the simulations are robust for extracting cosmological information from large scales which is the key goal of the DESI survey. Comparing matter power spectra, we find the codes agree to within 1% for $k \leq 10~h$Mpc$^{-1}$. We also run a comparison of three initial condition generation codes and find good agreement. In addition, we include a quasi-$N$-body code, FastPM, since we plan use it for certain DESI analyses. The impact of the halo definition and galaxy-halo relation will be presented in a follow up study., 18 pages, 17 figures. Submitted to MNRAS

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited., We present the steps taken to produce a reliable and complete input galaxy catalogue for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) using the photometric Legacy Survey DR8 DECam. We analyse some of the main issues faced in the selection of targets for the DESI BGS, such as star–galaxy separation, contamination by fragmented stars and bright galaxies. Our pipeline utilizes a new way to select BGS galaxies using Gaia photometry and we implement geometrical and photometric masks that reduce the number of spurious objects. The resulting catalogue is cross-matched with the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey to assess the completeness of the galaxy catalogue and the performance of the target selection. We also validate the clustering of the sources in our BGS catalogue by comparing with mock catalogues and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data. Finally, the robustness of the BGS selection criteria is assessed by quantifying the dependence of the target galaxy density on imaging and other properties. The largest systematic correlation we find is a 7 per cent suppression of the target density in regions of high stellar density. © 2021 The Author(s)., OR-M is supported by the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) through grant no. 297228/440775 and funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 734374. SC, PN, PZ, CMB, and JL acknowledge support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council through ST/P000541/1 and ST/T000244/1. ADM was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, under Award Number DE-SC0019022. JM gratefully acknowledges support from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics under Award Number DE-SC002008 and from the National Science Foundation under grant AST-1616414. This research used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated under contract no. DEAC02-05CH11231. This work also made extensive use of the NASA Astrophysics Data System and of the astro-ph preprint archive at arXiv.org. Authors want to thank the GAMA Collaboration for early access to GAMA DR4 data for this work. Some of the results in this paper have been derived using the HEALPY and HEALPIX package. We acknowledge the usage of the HyperLeda data base (http://leda.univ-lyon1.fr). The Siena Galaxy Atlas was made possible by funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics under Award Number DE-SC002008 and from the National Science Foundation under grant AST-1616414. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. This work used the DiRAC@Durham facility managed by the Institute for Computational Cosmology on behalf of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility (www.dirac.ac.uk). The equipment was funded by BEIS capital funding via STFC capital grants ST/K00042X/1, ST/P002293/1, and ST/R002371/1, Durham University, and STFC operations grant ST/R000832/1. DiRAC is part of the National e-Infrastructure. This research is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH1123, and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility under the same contract; additional support for DESI is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences under contract no. AST-0950945 to the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the National Council of Science and Technology, Mexico, the Ministry of Economy of Spain, and by the DESI Member Institutions. The authors are honoured to be permitted to conduct astronomical research on Iolkam Du’ag (Kitt Peak), a mountain with particular significance to the Tohono O’odham Nation., With funding from the Spanish government through the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation SEV-2017-0709.

We search for the baryon acoustic oscillations in the projected cross-correlation function binned into transverse comoving radius between the SDSS-IV DR16 eBOSS quasars and a dense photometric sample of galaxies selected from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys. We estimate the density of the photometric sample of galaxies in this redshift range to be about 2900 deg−2, which is deeper than the official DESI emission line galaxy selection, and the density of the spectroscopic sample is about 20 deg−2. In order to mitigate the systematics related to the use of different imaging surveys close to the detection limit, we use a neural network approach that accounts for complex dependences between the imaging attributes and the observed galaxy density. We find that we are limited by the depth of the imaging surveys that affects the density and purity of the photometric sample and its overlap in redshift with the quasar sample, which thus affects the performance of the method. When cross-correlating the photometric galaxies with quasars in the range 0.6 ≤ z ≤ 1.2, the cross-correlation function can provide better constraints on the comoving angular distance DM (6 per cent precision) compared to the constraint on the spherically averaged distance DV (9 per cent precision) obtained from the autocorrelation. Although not yet competitive, this technique will benefit from the arrival of deeper photometric data from upcoming surveys that will enable it to go beyond the current limitations we have identified in this work. © C 2021 The Author(s)., PZ would like to thank John Helly for his help modifying TWOPCF. PZ, SC, and PN acknowledge support from the Science Technology Facilities Council through ST/P000541/1 and ST/T000244/1. MR was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics under DE-SC0014329. H-JS was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics under DE-SC0014329 and DE-SC0019091. SA was supported by the European Research Council through the COSFORM Research Grant (#670193). This work used the DiRAC@Durham facility managed by the Institute for Computational Cosmology on behalf of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility (www.dirac.ac.uk). The equipment was funded by BEIS capital funding via STFC capital grants ST/K00042X/1, ST/P002293/1, and ST/R002371/1, Durham University, and STFC operations grant ST/R000832/1. DiRAC is part of the National e-Infrastructure. Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Participating Institutions. SDSS-IV acknowledges support and resources from the Center for High-Performance Computing at the University of Utah. The SDSS website is www.sdss.org. SDSS-IV is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS Collaboration including the Brazilian Participation Group, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Mellon University, the Chilean Participation Group, the French Participation Group, Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, The Johns Hopkins University, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU)/University of Tokyo, the Korean Participation Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Leibniz Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (MPIA Heidelberg), Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik (MPA Garching), Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), National Astronomical Observatories of China, New Mexico State University, New York University, University of Notre Dame, Observatário Nacional/MCTI, The Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, United Kingdom Participation Group, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, University of Arizona, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Oxford, University of Portsmouth, University of Utah, University of Virginia, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, Vanderbilt University, and Yale University. In addition, this research relied on resources provided to the eBOSS Collaboration by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). NERSC is a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. This research is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE–AC02–05CH1123 and by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility under the same contract; additional support for DESI is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences under Contract No.AST-0950945 to the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the Science and Technologies Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico, and by the DESI Member Institutions. The Legacy Imaging Surveys of the DESI footprint are supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH1123, by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility under the same contract, and by the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Astronomical Sciences under Contract No. AST-0950945 to NOAO., With funding from the Spanish government through the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation SEV-2017-0709.

The scientific exploitation of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Bright Galaxy Survey (DESI BGS) data requires the construction of mocks with galaxy population properties closely mimicking those of the actual DESI BGS targets. We create a high fidelity mock galaxy catalogue, including information about galaxies and their host dark matter subhaloes. The mock catalogue uses subhalo abundance matching (SHAM) with scatter to populate the P-Millennium N-body simulation with galaxies at the median BGS redshift of ~ 0.2, using formation redshift information to assign (g-r) rest-frame colours. The mock provides information about r-band absolute magnitudes, (g-r) rest-frame colours, 3D positions and velocities of a complete sample of DESI BGS galaxies in a volume of (542 Mpc/h)^3, as well as the masses of host dark matter haloes. This P-Millennium DESI BGS mock catalogue is ideally suited for the tuning of approximate mocks unable to resolve subhaloes that DESI BGS galaxies reside in, to test for systematics in analysis pipelines and to interpret (non-cosmological focused) DESI BGS analysis., 14 pages, 14 figures. Accepted at MNRAS in April 2021

We have modelled the stellar and nebular continua and emission-line intensity ratios of massive stellar populations in the Antennae galaxy using high resolution and self-consistent libraries of model HII regions around central clusters of aging stars. The model libraries are constructed using the stellar population synthesis code, Starburst99, and photoionisation model, Cloudy. The Geneva and PARSEC stellar evolutionary models are plugged into Starburst99 to allow comparison between the two models. Using a spectrum-fitting methodology that allows the spectral features in the stellar and nebular continua (e.g. Wolf-Rayet features, Paschen jump), and emission-line diagnostics to constrain the models, we apply the libraries to the high-resolution MUSE spectra of the starbursting regions in the Antennae galaxy. Through this approach, we were able to model the continuum emission from Wolf-Rayet stars and extract stellar and gas metallicities, ages, electron temperatures and densities of starbursts by exploiting the full spectrum. From the application to the Antennae galaxy, we find that (1) the starbursts in the Antennae galaxy are characterised by stellar and gas metallicities of around solar, (2) the star-forming gas in starbursts in the Western loop of NGC 4038 appear to be more enriched, albeit slightly, than the rest of galaxy, (3) the youngest starbursts are found across the overlap region and over parts of the western-loop, though in comparison, the regions in the western-loop appear to be at a slightly later stage in star-formation than the overlap region, and (4) the results obtained from fitting the Geneva and Parsec models are largely consistent., Comment: Submitted to MNRAS - 27 figures, 34 pages including 2 appendices

Current and future cosmological surveys are targeting star-forming galaxies at $z\sim 1$ with nebular emission lines. We use a state-of-the-art semi-analytical model of galaxy formation and evolution to explore the large scale environment of star-forming emission line galaxies (ELGs). Model ELGs are selected such that they can be compared directly with the DEEP2, VVDS, eBOSS-SGC and DESI surveys. The large scale environment of the ELGs is classified using velocity-shear-tensor and tidal-tensor algorithms. Half of the model ELGs live in filaments and about a third in sheets. Model ELGs which reside in knots have the largest satellite fractions. We find that the shape of the mean halo occupation distribution of model ELGs varies widely for different large scale environments. To interpret our results, we also study fixed number density samples of ELGs and galaxies selected using simpler criteria, with single cuts in stellar mass, star formation rate and [OII] luminosity. The fixed number density ELG selection produces samples that are close to L[OII] and SFR selected samples for densities above $10^{-4.2}h^{3}{\rm Mpc}^{-3}$. ELGs with an extra cut in stellar mass applied to fix their number density, present differences in sheets and knots with respect to the other samples. ELGs, SFR and L[OII] selected samples with equal number density have similar large scale bias but their clustering below separations of $1h^{-1}$Mpc is different., Comment: 20 pages, 17 figures, MNRAS in press, a small fraction of the presented data can be found here: https://github.com/viogp/plots4papers/tree/master/elg_cw_plots

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will execute a nearly magnitude-limited survey of low redshift galaxies ($0.05 \leq z \leq 0.4$, median $z \approx 0.2$). Clustering analyses of this Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) will yield the most precise measurements to date of baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift-space distortions at low redshift. DESI BGS will comprise two target classes: (i) BRIGHT ($r, Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure

Alarcon, A., et al., We present - and make publicly available - accurate and precise photometric redshifts in the ACS footprint from the COSMOS field for objects with iAB ≤ 23. The redshifts are computed using a combination of narrow-band photometry from PAUS, a survey with 40 narrow bands spaced at 100\,\mathring{\rm A} intervals covering the range from 4500 to 8500\,\mathring{\rm A}, and 26 broad, intermediate, and narrow bands covering the UV, visible and near-infrared spectrum from the COSMOS2015 catalogue. We introduce a new method that models the spectral energy distributions as a linear combination of continuum and emission-line templates and computes its Bayes evidence, integrating over the linear combinations. The correlation between the UV luminosity and the O ii line is measured using the 66 available bands with the zCOSMOS spectroscopic sample, and used as a prior which constrains the relative flux between continuum and emission-line templates. The flux ratios between the O ii line and Hα, Hβ and \mathrm{O\,{\small III}} are similarly measured and used to generate the emission-line templates. Comparing to public spectroscopic surveys via the quantity Δz (zphoto - zspec)/(1 + zspec), we find the photometric redshifts to be more precise than previous estimates, with σ68(Δz) ≈ (0.003, 0.009) for galaxies at magnitude iAB ∼18 and iAB ∼23, respectively, which is three times and 1.66 times tighter than COSMOS2015. Additionally, we find the redshifts to be very accurate on average, yielding a median of the Δz distribution compatible with |median(Δz)| ≤ 0.001 at all redshifts and magnitudes considered. Both the added PAUS data and new methodology contribute significantly to the improved results. The catalogue produced with the technique presented here is expected to provide a robust redshift calibration for current and future lensing surveys, and allows one to probe galaxy formation physics in an unexplored luminosity-redshift regime, thanks to its combination of depth, completeness, and excellent redshift precision and accuracy., Argonne National Laboratory’s work was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of High Energy Physics. Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Laboratory, is operated by UChicago Argonne LLC under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The PAU Survey is partially supported by MINECO under grantsCSD2007-00060, AYA2015-71825, ESP2017-89838, PGC2018-094773, PGC2018-102021, SEV-2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, MDM-2015-0509 and Juan de la Cierva fellowship and LACEGAL and EWC Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant No 734374 and no. 776247 with ERDF funds from the EU Horizon 2020 Programme, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IEEC and IFAE are partially funded by the CERCA and Beatriu de Pinos program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Funding for PAUS has also been provided by Durham University (via the ERC StG DEGAS-259586), ETH Zurich, Leiden University (via ERC StG ADULT-279396 and Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Vici grant 639.043.512), University College London and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement No 776247 EWC. The PAU data centre is hosted by the Port d’Informació Científica (PIC), maintained through a collaboration of CIEMAT and IFAE, with additional support from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and ERDF. We acknowledge the PIC services department team for their support and fruitful discussions. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 776247. H. Hildebrandt is supported by a Heisenberg grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Hi 1495/5-1) as well as an ERC Consolidator Grant (No. 770935). H. Hoekstra acknowledges support from Vici grant 639.043.512 from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). GM acknowledges support from ST/P006744/1. CMB acknowledges support from ST/P000541/1 and ST/T000244/1. PN acknowledges support from ST/P000541/1 and ST/T000244/1. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Maria Skłodowska-Curie (grant agreement No 754510), the National Science Centre of Poland (grant UMO-2016/23/N/ST9/02963) and by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through Juan de la Cierva-formacion program (reference FJC2018-038792-I).

Large multi-object spectroscopic surveys require automated algorithms to optimise their observing strategy. One of the most ambitious upcoming spectroscopic surveys is the 4MOST survey. The 4MOST survey facility is a fibre-fed spectroscopic instrument on the VISTA telescope with a large enough field of view to survey a large fraction of the southern sky within a few years. Several Galactic and extragalactic surveys will be carried out simultaneously, so the combined target density will strongly vary. In this paper, we describe a new tiling algorithm that can naturally deal with the large target density variations on the sky and which automatically handles the different exposure times of targets. The tiling pattern is modelled as a marked point process, which is characterised by a probability density that integrates the requirements imposed by the 4MOST survey. The optimal tilling pattern with respect to the defined model is estimated by the tiles configuration that maximises the proposed probability density. In order to achieve this maximisation a simulated annealing algorithm is implemented. The algorithm automatically finds an optimal tiling pattern and assigns a tentative sky brightness condition and exposure time for each tile, while minimising the total execution time that is needed to observe the list of targets in the combined input catalogue of all surveys. Hence, the algorithm maximises the long-term observing efficiency and provides an optimal tiling solution for the survey. While designed for the 4MOST survey, the algorithm is flexible and can with simple modifications be applied to any other multi-object spectroscopic survey., Comment: 20 pages, 11 figures, submitted to MNRAS

Emission line galaxies (ELGs) are used in several ongoing and upcoming surveys as tracers of the dark matter distribution. Using a new galaxy formation model, we explore the characteristics of [O II] emitters, which dominate optical ELG selections at z ≃ 1. Model [O II] emitters at 0.5 < z < 1.5 are selected to mimic the DEEP2, VVDS, eBOSS and DESI surveys. The luminosity functions of model [O II] emitters are in reasonable agreement with observations. The selected [O II] emitters are hosted by haloes with Mhalo≥1010.3h−1M⊙, with ∼90% of them being central star-forming galaxies. The predicted mean halo occupation distributions of [O II] emitters has a shape typical of that inferred for star-forming galaxies, with the contribution from central galaxies, ⟨N⟩[O II],cen, being far from the canonical step function. The ⟨N⟩[O II],cen can be described as the sum of an asymmetric Gaussian for disks and a step function for spheroids, which plateaus below unity. The model [O II] emitters have a clustering bias close to unity, which is below the expectations for eBOSS and DESI ELGs. At z∼1, a comparison with observed g-band selected galaxy, which are expected to be dominated by [O II] emitters, indicates that our model produces too few [O II] emitters that are satellite galaxies. This suggests the need to revise our modelling of hot gas stripping in satellite galaxies.

We study the environments of low- and high- excitation radio galaxies (LERGs and HERGs respectively) in the redshift range $0.01 < z < 0.4$, using a sample of 399 radio galaxies and environmental measurements from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. In our analysis we use the fifth nearest neighbour density ($\Sigma_{5}$) and the GAMA galaxy groups catalogue (G3Cv6) and construct control samples of galaxies matched in {\update stellar mass and colour} to the radio-detected sample. We find that LERGs and HERGs exist in different environments and that this difference is dependent on radio luminosity. High-luminosity LERGs ($L_{\rm NVSS} \gtrsim 10^{24}$ W Hz$^{-1}$) lie in much denser environments than a matched radio-quiet control sample (about three times as dense, as measured by $\Sigma_{5}$), and are more likely to be members of galaxy groups ($82^{+5}_{-7}$ percent of LERGs are in GAMA groups, compared to $58^{+3}_{-3}$ percent of the control sample). In contrast, the environments of the HERGs and lower luminosity LERGs are indistinguishable from that of a matched control sample. Our results imply that high-luminosity LERGs lie in more massive haloes than non-radio galaxies of similar stellar mass and colour, in agreement with earlier studies (Wake et al. 2008; Donoso et al. 2010). When we control for the preference of LERGs to be found in groups, both high- and low- luminosity LERGs are found in higher-mass haloes ($\sim 0.2$ dex; at least 97 percent significant) than the non-radio control sample., Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication by MNRAS

Future galaxy surveys require realistic mock catalogues to understand and quantify systematics in order to make precise cosmological measurements. We present a halo lightcone catalogue and halo occupation distribution (HOD) galaxy catalogue built using the Millennium-XXL (MXXL) simulation. The halo catalogue covers the full sky, extending to z = 2 with a mass resolution of ~1e11 Msun/h . We use this to build a galaxy catalogue, which has an r-band magnitude limit of r < 20.0, with a median redshift of z~0.2. A Monte Carlo HOD method is used to assign galaxies to the halo lightcone catalogue, and we evolve the HODs to reproduce a target luminosity function; by construction, the luminosity function of galaxies in the mock is in agreement with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) at low redshifts and the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey at high redshifts. A Monte Carlo method is used to assign a 0.1(g-r) colour to each galaxy, and the colour distribution of galaxies at different redshifts agrees with measurements from GAMA. The clustering of galaxies in the mock for galaxies in different magnitude and redshift bins is in good agreement with measurements from SDSS and GAMA, and the colour-dependent clustering is in reasonable agreement. We show that the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) can be measured in the mock catalogue, and the redshift space distortions (RSDs) are in agreement with measurements from SDSS, illustrating that this catalogue will be useful for upcoming surveys., 18 pages, 18 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Halo and galaxy catalogues are available at http://icc.dur.ac.uk/data/ and https://tao.asvo.org.au/tao/

Observations with the Chandra X-ray Observatory are used to examine the hot gas properties within a sample of 10 galaxy groups selected from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey's optical Friends-of-Friends group catalogue. Our groups have been screened to eliminate spurious and unrelaxed systems, and the effectiveness of this procedure is demonstrated by the detection of intergalactic hot gas in 80 per cent of our sample. However, we find that 9 of the 10 are X-ray underluminous by a mean factor of $\sim$4 compared to typical X-ray-selected samples. Consistent with this, the majority of our groups have gas fractions that are lower and gas entropies somewhat higher than those seen in typical X-ray-selected samples. Two groups, which have high 2{\sigma} lower limits on their gas entropy, are candidates for the population of high-entropy groups predicted by some active galactic nucleus feedback models., Comment: 18 pages, 7 Figures with 10 subfigures, 5 Tables, Accepted by MNRAS

We present a proof of concept of a new galaxy group finder method, Markov graph Clustering (MCL; Van Dongen 2000) that naturally handles probabilistic linking criteria. We introduce a new figure of merit, the variation of information statistic (VI; Meila 2003), used to optimise the free parameter(s) of the MCL algorithm. We explain that the common Friends-of-Friends (FoF) method is a subset of MCL. We test MCL in real space on a realistic mock galaxy catalogue constructed from a N-body simulation using the GALFORM model. With a fixed linking length FoF produces the best group catalogues as quantified by the VI statistic. By making the linking length sensitive to the local galaxy density, the quality of the FoF and MCL group catalogues improve significantly, with MCL being preferred over FoF due to a smaller VI value. The MCL group catalogue recovers accurately the underlying halo multiplicity function at all multiplicities. MCL provides better and more consistent group purity and halo completeness values at all multiplicities than FoF. As MCL allows for probabilistic pairwise connections, it is a promising algorithm to find galaxy groups in photometric surveys., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We study potential systematic effects of assembly bias on cosmological parameter constraints from redshift space distortion measurements. We use a semi-analytic galaxy formation model applied to the Millennium N-body WMAP-7 simulation to study the effects of halo assembly bias on the redshift space distortions of the galaxy correlation function. We look at the pairwise velocities of galaxies living in haloes with concentrations and ages in the upper and lower quintiles, and find that the velocity differences between these are consistent with those reported for real-space clustering analyses, i.e. samples with higher clustering also exhibit stronger infall pairwise motions. This can also be seen in the monopole and quadrupole of the redshift-space correlation function. We find that regardless of the method of measurement, the changes in the $\beta$ parameter due to different secondary halo parameters fully tracks the change in the bias Parameter. Hence, assembly bias does not introduce detectable systematics in the inferred logarithmic growth factor., Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures.Submitted to MNRAS

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) will be a survey of bright, low redshift galaxies, which is planned to cover an area of ~14,000 sq deg in 3 passes. Each pass will cover the survey area with ~2000 pointings, each of area ~8 sq deg. The BGS is currently proposed to consist of a bright high priority sample to an r-band magnitude limit r ~ 19.5, with a fainter low priority sample to r ~ 20. The geometry of the DESI fibre positioners in the focal plane of the telescope affects the completeness of the survey, and has a non-trivial impact on clustering measurements. Using a BGS mock catalogue, we show that completeness due to fibre assignment primarily depends on the surface density of galaxies. Completeness is high (>95%) in low density regions, but very low (, 18 pages, 17 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We investigate the variations in galaxy occupancy of the dark matter haloes with the large-scale environment and halo formation time, using two state-of-the-art hydrodynamical cosmological simulations, EAGLE and Illustris. For both simulations, we use three galaxy samples with a fixed number density ranked by stellar mass. For these samples we find that low-mass haloes in the most dense environments are more likely to host a central galaxy than those in the least dense environments. When splitting the halo population by formation time, these relations are stronger. Hence, at a fixed low halo mass, early-formed haloes are more likely to host a central galaxy than late-formed haloes since they have had more time to assemble. The satellite occupation shows a reverse trend where early-formed haloes host fewer satellites due to having more time to merge with the central galaxy. We also analyse the stellar mass -- halo mass relation for central galaxies in terms of the large-scale environment and formation time of the haloes. We find that low mass haloes in the most dense environment host relatively more massive central galaxies. This trend is also found when splitting the halo population by age, with early-formed haloes hosting more massive galaxies. Our results are in agreement with previous findings from semi-analytical models, providing robust predictions for the occupancy variation signature in the halo occupation distribution of galaxy formation models., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 17 pages, 11 figures

Aims. We aim to investigate if the environment (characterised by the host dark matter halo mass) plays any role in shaping the galaxy star formation main sequence (MS). Methods. The Galaxy and Mass Assembly project (GAMA) combines a spectroscopic survey with photometric information in 21 bands from the far-ultraviolet (FUV) to the far-infrared (FIR). Stellar masses and dust-corrected star-formation rates (SFR) are derived from spectral energy distribution (SED) modelling using MAGPHYS. We use the GAMA galaxy group catalogue to examine the variation of the fraction of star-forming galaxies (SFG) and properties of the MS with respect to the environment. Results. We examine the environmental dependence for stellar mass selected samples without preselecting star-forming galaxies and study any dependence on the host halo mass separately for centrals and satellites out to z ~ 0.3. We find the SFR distribution at fixed stellar mass can be described by the combination of two Gaussians (referred to as the star-forming Gaussian and the quiescent Gaussian). Using the observed bimodality to define SFG, we investigate how the fraction of SFG F(SFG) and properties of the MS change with environment. For centrals, the position of the MS is similar to the field but with a larger scatter. No significant dependence on halo mass is observed. For satellites, the position of the MS is almost always lower (by ~0.2 dex) compared to the field and the width is almost always larger. F(SFG) is similar between centrals (in different halo mass bins) and field galaxies. However, for satellites F(SFG) decreases with increasing halo mass and this dependence is stronger towards lower redshift., 6 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

The Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) is an optical wide-field survey designed to map the matter distribution in the Universe using weak gravitational lensing. In this paper, we use these data to measure the density profiles and masses of a sample of $\sim \mathrm{1400}$ spectroscopically identified galaxy groups and clusters from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. We detect a highly significant signal (signal-to-noise-ratio $\sim$ 120), allowing us to study the properties of dark matter haloes over one and a half order of magnitude in mass, from $M \sim 10^{13}-10^{14.5} h^{-1}\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$. We interpret the results for various subsamples of groups using a halo model framework which accounts for the mis-centring of the Brightest Cluster Galaxy (used as the tracer of the group centre) with respect to the centre of the group's dark matter halo. We find that the density profiles of the haloes are well described by an NFW profile with concentrations that agree with predictions from numerical simulations. In addition, we constrain scaling relations between the mass and a number of observable group properties. We find that the mass scales with the total r-band luminosity as a power-law with slope $1.16 \pm 0.13$ (1-sigma) and with the group velocity dispersion as a power-law with slope $1.89 \pm 0.27$ (1-sigma). Finally, we demonstrate the potential of weak lensing studies of groups to discriminate between models of baryonic feedback at group scales by comparing our results with the predictions from the Cosmo-OverWhelmingly Large Simulations (Cosmo-OWLS) project, ruling out models without AGN feedback., 23 pages, 17 figures, MNRAS accepted, cross-references to other KiDS/GAMA papers fixed in v2; Weak lensing catalogues are available at http://kids.strw.leidenuniv.nl

The two-point correlation function of the galaxy distribution is a key cosmological observable that allows us to constrain the dynamical and geometrical state of our Universe. To measure the correlation function we need to know both the galaxy positions and the expected galaxy density field. The expected field is commonly specified using a Monte-Carlo sampling of the volume covered by the survey and, to minimize additional sampling errors, this random catalog has to be much larger than the data catalog. Correlation function estimators compare data-data pair counts to data-random and random-random pair counts, where random-random pairs usually dominate the computational cost. Future redshift surveys will deliver spectroscopic catalogs of tens of millions of galaxies. Given the large number of random objects required to guarantee sub-percent accuracy, it is of paramount importance to improve the efficiency of the algorithm without degrading its precision. We show both analytically and numerically that splitting the random catalog into a number of subcatalogs of the same size as the data catalog when calculating random-random pairs, and excluding pairs across different subcatalogs provides the optimal error at fixed computational cost. For a random catalog fifty times larger than the data catalog, this reduces the computation time by a factor of more than ten without affecting estimator variance or bias., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures

We present a new scheme, $\it{galtag}$, for refining the photometric redshift measurements of faint galaxies by probabilistically tagging them to observed galaxy groups constructed from a brighter, magnitude-limited spectroscopy survey. First, this method is tested on the DESI light-cone data constructed on the GALFORM galaxy formation model to tests its validity. We then apply it to the photometric observations of galaxies in the Kilo-Degree Imaging Survey (KiDS) over a 1 deg$^2$ region centred at 15$^\mathrm{h}$. This region contains Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) deep spectroscopic observations (i-band, Submitted version, comments welcome

This article has been accepted for publication in MNRAS ©: 2018 The Autor(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved., We present a mock catalogue for the Physics of the Accelerating Universe Survey (PAUS) and use it to quantify the competitiveness of narrow-band imaging for measuring spectral features and galaxy clustering. The mock agrees with observed number count and redshift distribution data. We demonstrate the importance of including emission lines in the narrow-band fluxes. We show that PAUCam has sufficient resolution to measure the strength of the 4000 Å break to the nominal PAUS depth. We predict the evolution of a narrow-band luminosity function and show how this can be affected by the OII emission line. We introduce new rest-frame broad-bands (UV and blue) that can be derived directly from the narrow-band fluxes. We use these bands along with D4000 and redshift to define galaxy samples and provide predictions for galaxy clustering measurements. We show that systematic errors in the recovery of the projected clustering due to photometric redshift errors in PAUS are significantly smaller than the expected statistical errors. The galaxy clustering on two halo scales can be recovered quantitatively without correction, and all qualitative trends seen in the one halo term are recovered. In this analysis, mixing between samples reduces the expected contrast between the one halo clustering of red and blue galaxies and demonstrates the importance of a mock catalogue for interpreting galaxy clustering results. The mock catalogue is available on request at https://cosmohub.pic.es/home., This work was supported by the Science and Technol- ogy Facilities Council [ST/J501013/1, ST/L00075X/1]. PN acknowledges the support of the Royal Society through the award of a University Research Fellowship and the Euro- pean Research Council, through receipt of a Starting Grant (DEGAS-259586). We acknowledge support from the Royal Society international exchange programme. This work used the DiRAC Data Centric system at Durham University, operated by the Institute for Computational Cosmology on behalf of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility www.dirac. ac.uk. This equipment was funded by BIS National E- infrastructure cap- ital grant ST/K00042X/1, STFC capital grant ST/H008519/1, and STFC DiRAC Operations grant ST/K003267/1 and Durham University. DiRAC is part of the National E-Infrastructure. Funding for PAUS has been provided by Durham Uni- versity (via the ERC StG DEGAS-259586), ETH Zurich, Leiden University (via ERC StG ADULT-279396 and Netherlands Organisation for Scienti c Research (NWO) Vici grant 639.043.512) and University College London. The PAUS participants from Spanish institutions are par- tially supported by MINECO under grants CSD2007-00060, AYA2015-71825, ESP2015-88861, FPA2015-68048, SEV- 2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IEEC and IFAE are partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya.Funding for PAUS has been provided by Durham Uni- versity (via the ERC StG DEGAS-259586), ETH Zurich, Leiden University (via ERC StG ADULT-279396 and Netherlands Organisation for Scienti c Research (NWO) Vici grant 639.043.512) and University College London. The PAUS participants from Spanish institutions are par- tially supported by MINECO under grants CSD2007-00060, AYA2015-71825, ESP2015-88861, FPA2015-68048, SEV- 2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union. IEEC and IFAE are partially funded by the CERCA program of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Funding for PAUS has been provided by Durham Uni- versity (via the ERC StG DEGAS-259586), ETH Zurich, Leiden University (via ERC StG ADULT-279396 and Netherlands Organisation for Scienti c Research (NWO) Vici grant 639.043.512) and University College London. The PAUS participants from Spanish institutions are par- tially supported by MINECO under grants CSD2007-00060, AYA2015-71825, ESP2015-88861, FPA2015-68048, SEV- 2016-0588, SEV-2016-0597, and MDM-2015-0509, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union

We describe data release 3 (DR3) of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. The GAMA survey is a spectroscopic redshift and multi-wavelength photometric survey in three equatorial regions each of 60.0 deg^2 (G09, G12, G15), and two southern regions of 55.7 deg^2 (G02) and 50.6 deg^2 (G23). DR3 consists of: the first release of data covering the G02 region and of data on H-ATLAS sources in the equatorial regions; and updates to data on sources released in DR2. DR3 includes 154809 sources with secure redshifts across four regions. A subset of the G02 region is 95.5% redshift complete to r, 14 pages, 15 figures, accepted by MNRAS. GAMA DR3 is available at http://www.gama-survey.org/dr3/

The galaxy pairwise velocity dispersion (PVD) can provide important tests of non-standard gravity and galaxy formation models. We describe measurements of the PVD of galaxies in the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey as a function of projected separation and galaxy luminosity. Due to the faint magnitude limit ($r < 19.8$) and highly-complete spectroscopic sampling of the GAMA survey, we are able to reliably measure the PVD to smaller scales ($r_\bot = 0.01$ Mpc/h) than previous work. The measured PVD at projected separations $r_\bot, Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 17 pages

We present predictions for the galaxy-galaxy lensing (GGL) profile from the EAGLE hydrodynamical cosmological simulation at redshift z = 0.18, in the spatial range 0.02

We demonstrate how the properties of a galaxy depend on the mass of its host dark matter subhalo, using two independent models of galaxy formation. For the cases of stellar mass and black hole mass, the median property value displays a monotonic dependence on subhalo mass. The slope of the relation changes for subhalo masses for which heating by active galactic nuclei becomes important. The median property values are predicted to be remarkably similar for central and satellite galaxies. The two models predict considerable scatter around the median property value, though the size of the scatter is model dependent. There is only modest evolution with redshift in the median galaxy property at a fixed subhalo mass. Properties such as cold gas mass and star formation rate, however, are predicted to have a complex dependence on subhalo mass. In these cases subhalo mass is not a good indicator of the value of the galaxy property. We illustrate how the predictions in the galaxy property - subhalo mass plane differ from the assumptions made in empirical models of galaxy clustering by reconstructing the model output using a subhalo abundance matching scheme. In its simplest form, abundance matching generally does not reproduce the clustering predicted by the models, typically resulting in an overprediction of the clustering signal. We show how the basic abundance matching scheme can be extended to reproduce the model predictions more faithfully, which has implications for the analysis of galaxy clustering, particularly for low abundance samples., 16 pages, 12 figures. Revised Version

We examine the performance of a variety of different estimators for the mass of galaxy groups, based on their galaxy distribution alone. We draw galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey for a set of groups and clusters for which hydrostatic mass estimates based on high-quality Chandra X-ray data are available. These are used to calibrate the galaxy-based mass proxies, and to test their performance. Richness, luminosity, galaxy overdensity, rms radius and dynamical mass proxies are all explored. These different mass indicators all have their merits, and we argue that using them in combination can provide protection against being misled by the effects of dynamical disturbance or variations in star formation efficiency. Using them in this way leads us to infer the presence of significant non-statistical scatter in the X-ray based mass estimates we employ. We apply a similar analysis to a set of mock groups derived from applying a semi-analytic galaxy formation code to the Millennium dark matter simulation. The relations between halo mass and the mass proxies differ significantly in some cases from those seen in the observational groups, and we discuss possible reasons for this.

We study present-day galaxy clustering in the EAGLE cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. EAGLE's galaxy formation parameters were calibrated to reproduce the redshift $z=0.1$ galaxy stellar mass function, and the simulation also reproduces galaxy colours well. The simulation volume is too small to correctly sample large-scale fluctuations and we therefore concentrate on scales smaller than a few mega parsecs. We find very good agreement with observed clustering measurements from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey, when galaxies are binned by stellar mass, color, or luminosity. However, low-mass red-galaxies are clustered too strongly, which is at least partly due to limited numerical resolution. Apart from this limitation, we conclude that EAGLE galaxies inhabit similar dark matter haloes as observed GAMA galaxies, and that the radial distribution of satellite galaxies as function of stellar mass and colour is similar to that observed as well., Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

We report the results of the 2dF-VST ATLAS Cold Spot galaxy redshift survey (2CSz) based on imaging from VST ATLAS and spectroscopy from 2dF AAOmega over the core of the CMB Cold Spot. We sparsely surveyed the inner 5$^{\circ}$ radius of the Cold Spot to a limit of $i_{AB} \le 19.2$, sampling $\sim7000$ galaxies at $z, Comment: Submitted to MNRAS

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 356 (4), ISSN:0035-8711, ISSN:1365-2966, ISSN:1365-8711

We study the dependence of the galaxy content of dark matter halos on large-scale environment and halo formation time using semi-analytic galaxy models applied to the Millennium simulation. We analyze subsamples of halos at the extremes of these distributions and measure the occupation functions for the galaxies they host. We find distinct differences in these occupation functions. The main effect with environment is that central galaxies (and in one model also the satellites) in denser regions start populating lower-mass halos. A similar, but significantly stronger, trend exists with halo age, where early-forming halos are more likely to host central galaxies at lower halo mass. We discuss the origin of these trends and the connection to the stellar mass -- halo mass relation. We find that, at fixed halo mass, older halos and to some extent also halos in dense environments tend to host more massive galaxies. Additionally, we see a reverse trend for the satellite galaxies occupation where early-forming halos have fewer satellites, likely due to having more time for them to merge with the central galaxy. We describe these occupancy variations also in terms of the changes in the occupation function parameters, which can aid in constructing realistic mock galaxy catalogs. Finally, we study the corresponding galaxy auto- and cross-correlation functions of the different samples and elucidate the impact of assembly bias on galaxy clustering. Our results can inform theoretical models of assembly bias and attempts to detect it in the real universe., 20 pages, 12 figures. Submitted to ApJ. The key results are shown in Figures 3, 9 and 10

The merging history of galaxies can be traced with studies of dynamically close pairs. These consist of a massive primary galaxy and a less massive secondary (or satellite) galaxy. The study of the stellar populations of secondary (lower mass) galaxies in close pairs provides a way to understand galaxy growth by mergers. Here we focus on systems involving at least one massive galaxy - with stellar mass above $10^{11}M_\odot$ in the highly complete GAMA survey. Our working sample comprises 2,692 satellite galaxy spectra (0.1, Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, MNRAS, in press

We investigate possible signatures of halo assembly bias for spectroscopically selected galaxy groups from the GAMA survey using weak lensing measurements from the spatially overlapping regions of the deeper, high-imaging-quality photometric KiDS survey. We use GAMA groups with an apparent richness larger than 4 to identify samples with comparable mean host halo masses but with a different radial distribution of satellite galaxies, which is a proxy for the formation time of the haloes. We measure the weak lensing signal for groups with a steeper than average and with a shallower than average satellite distribution and find no sign of halo assembly bias, with the bias ratio of $0.85^{+0.37}_{-0.25}$, which is consistent with the $\Lambda$CDM prediction. Our galaxy groups have typical masses of $10^{13} M_{\odot}/h$, naturally complementing previous studies of halo assembly bias on galaxy cluster scales., Comment: 16 pages, 18 figures, accepted to MNRAS

We use the halo occupation distribution (HOD) framework to characterise the predictions from two independent galaxy formation models for the galactic content of dark matter haloes and its evolution with redshift. Our galaxy samples correspond to a range of fixed number densities defined by stellar mass and span $0 \le z \le 3$. We find remarkable similarities between the model predictions. Differences arise at low galaxy number densities which are sensitive to the treatment of heating of the hot halo by active galactic nuclei. The evolution of the form of the HOD can be described in a relatively simple way, and we model each HOD parameter using its value at $z=0$ and an additional evolutionary parameter. In particular, we find that the ratio between the characteristic halo masses for hosting central and satellite galaxies can serve as a sensitive diagnostic for galaxy evolution models. Our results can be used to test and develop empirical studies of galaxy evolution and can facilitate the construction of mock galaxy catalogues for future surveys., Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, 5 tables. Accepted by MNRAS

The standard Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) models were originally developed based on results from semi-analytic and hydrodynamical galaxy formation models. Those models have since progressed, in particular to include AGN feedback to match the galaxy luminosity function in a universe with the observed baryon fraction. AGN feedback affects the relationship between galaxy stellar mass and luminosity, in particular making the relationship non-monotonic. For matched number density samples, galaxies in luminosity-threshold samples occupy a different range of halo masses from those in stellar-mass-threshold samples. We find that the shapes of the HODs of luminosity-threshold samples are slightly more complicated in semi-analytic galaxy formation models that include AGN feedback than are assumed by standard HOD models. We also find that subhalo abundance matching (SHAM) does not preserve these non-standard shapes. We show that catalogues created using SHAM and the semi-analytic model Galform that have the same large-scale 2-point clustering by construction have different void probability functions (VPFs) in both real and redshift space. We find that these differences arise from the different HOD shapes, as opposed to assembly bias, which indicates that the VPF could be used to test the suitability of an HOD model with real data., Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, submitted to MNRAS

In recent years, multiple studies have reported substantial populations of large, low-surface-brightness galaxies in local galaxy clusters. Various theories that aim to explain the presence of such ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) have since been proposed. A key question that will help to differentiate between models is whether UDGs have counterparts in lower-mass host haloes, and what their abundance as a function of halo mass is. In this study we extend our previous study of UDGs in galaxy clusters to galaxy groups. We measure the abundance of UDGs in 325 spectroscopically-selected groups from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. We make use of the overlapping imaging from the ESO Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), from which we can identify galaxies with mean surface brightnesses within their effective radii down to ~25.5 mag arcsec$^{-2}$ in the r-band. We are able to measure a significant overdensity of UDGs (with sizes r_eff > 1.5 kpc) in galaxy groups down to M200=10^12 Msun, a regime where approximately only 1 in 10 groups contains a UDG that we can detect. We combine measurements of the abundance of UDGs in haloes that cover three orders of magnitude in halo mass, finding that their numbers scale quite steeply with halo mass; N_UDG (R, Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures (including appendices). Accepted for publication in A&A after minor revision

The Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) is the largest Guaranteed Time Key Programme on the Herschel Space Observatory. With a wedding cake survey strategy, it consists of nested fields with varying depth and area totalling ~380 deg^2. In this paper, we present deep point source catalogues extracted from Herschel-SPIRE observations of all HerMES fields, except for the later addition of the 270 deg^2 HeLMS field. These catalogues constitute the second Data Release (DR2) made in October 2013. A subset of these catalogues, which consists of bright sources extracted from Herschel-SPIRE observations completed by May 1, 2010 (covering ~ 74 deg^2) were released earlier in the first extensive Data Release (DR1) in March 2012. Two different methods are used to generate the point source catalogues, the SUSSEXtractor (SXT) point source extractor used in two earlier data releases (EDR and EDR2) and a new source detection and photometry method. The latter combines an iterative source detection algorithm, StarFinder (SF), and a De-blended SPIRE Photometry (DESPHOT) algorithm. We use end-to-end Herschel-SPIRE simulations with realistic number counts and clustering properties to characterise basic properties of the point source catalogues, such as the completeness, reliability, photometric and positional accuracy. Over 500, 000 catalogue entries in HerMES fields (except HeLMS) are released to the public through the HeDAM website (http://hedam.oamp.fr/herMES)., 14 pages, 7 figures, submitted to MNRAS. Comments welcome

We present two-point correlation function statistics of the mass and the halos in the chameleon $f(R)$ modified gravity scenario using a series of large volume N-body simulations. Three distinct variations of $f(R)$ are considered (F4, F5 and F6) and compared to a fiducial $\Lambda$CDM model in the redshift range $z \in [0,1]$. We find that the matter clustering is indistinguishable for all models except for F4, which shows a significantly steeper slope. The ratio of the redshift- to real-space correlation function at scales $> 20 h^{-1} \mathrm{Mpc}$ agrees with the linear General Relativity (GR) Kaiser formula for the viable $f(R)$ models considered. We consider three halo populations characterized by spatial abundances comparable to that of luminous red galaxies (LRGs) and galaxy clusters. The redshift-space halo correlation functions of F4 and F5 deviate significantly from $\Lambda$CDM at intermediate and high redshift, as the $f(R)$ halo bias is smaller or equal to that of the $\Lambda$CDM case. Finally we introduce a new model independent clustering statistic to distinguish $f(R)$ from GR: the relative halo clustering ratio -- $\mathcal{R}$. The sampling required to adequately reduce the scatter in $\mathcal{R}$ will be available with the advent of the next generation galaxy redshift surveys. This will foster a prospective avenue to obtain largely model-independent cosmological constraints on this class of modified gravity models., Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. v2: Version accepted for publication in MNRAS, includes minor text additions

CH, MV, MC, HHo, CS and AC acknowledge support from the European Research Council under FP7 grant number 279396 (MV, MC, CS, HHo), grant number 240185 (AC and CH) and grant number G47112 (CH). MV acknowledges support from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through grants 614.001.103. HHi is supported by an Emmy Noether grant (No. Hi 1495/2-1) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. RN acknowledges support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) provided via DLR under project no. 50QE1103. TM-R and PN acknowledge support from an European Research Council Starting Grant (DEGAS-259586). This work is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in the framework of the TR33 ‘The Dark Universe’. GVK acknowledges financial support from the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA) and Target. Target is supported by Samenwerkingsverband Noord Nederland, European fund for regional development, Dutch Ministry of economic affairs, Pieken in de Delta, Provinces of Groningen and Drenthe. EvU acknowledges support from an STFC Ernest Rutherford Research Grant, grant reference ST/L00285X/1. Galaxies and their dark matter haloes are part of a complex network of mass structures, collectively called the cosmic web. Using the tidal tensor prescription these structures can be classified into four cosmic environments: voids, sheets, filaments and knots. As the cosmic web may influence the formation and evolution of dark matter haloes and the galaxies they host, we aim to study the effect of these cosmic environments on the average mass of galactic haloes. To this end we measure the galaxy-galaxy lensing profile of 91 195 galaxies, within 0.039 < z

We present the first application of a "multiple-tracer" redshift-space distortion (RSD) analysis to an observational galaxy sample, using data from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly survey (GAMA). Our dataset is an r < 19.8 magnitude-limited sample of 178,579 galaxies covering redshift interval z < 0.5 and area 180 deg^2. We obtain improvements of 10-20% in measurements of the gravitational growth rate compared to a single-tracer analysis, deriving from the correlated sample variance imprinted in the distributions of the overlapping galaxy populations. We present new expressions for the covariances between the auto-power and cross-power spectra of galaxy samples that are valid for a general survey selection function and weighting scheme. We find no evidence for a systematic dependence of the measured growth rate on the galaxy tracer used, justifying the RSD modelling assumptions, and validate our results using mock catalogues from N-body simulations. For multiple tracers selected by galaxy colour, we measure normalized growth rates in two independent redshift bins f*sigma_8(z=0.18) = 0.36 +/- 0.09 and f*sigma_8(z=0.38) = 0.44 +/- 0.06, in agreement with standard GR gravity and other galaxy surveys at similar redshifts., 19 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

The Pan-STARRS1 survey is acquiring multi-epoch imaging in 5 bands (grizy) over the entire sky north of declination -30deg (the $3\pi$ survey). In July 2011 a test area of about 70 sq.deg. was observed to the expected final depth of the main survey. In this, the first of a series of papers targetting the galaxy count and clustering properties of the combined multi-epoch test area data, we present a detailed investigation into the depth of the survey and the reliability of the Pan-STARRS1 analysis software. We show that the Pan-STARRS1 reduction software can recover the properties of fake sources, and show good agreement between the magnitudes measured by Pan-STARRS1 and those from Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We also examine the number of false detections apparent in the Pan-STARRS1 data. Our comparisons show that the test area survey is somewhat deeper than the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in all bands, and, in particular, the z band approaches the depth of the stacked Sloan Stripe 82 data., Comment: 17 pages, 24 figures. Published by MNRAS, published version available at: http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/content/435/3/1825