The automated calibration of simulated galaxy catalogues and the generation of realistic galaxy mocks for modified gravity scenarios
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Simulated galaxy catalogues have become an essential tool for preparing and exploiting observations from galaxy surveys. They constitute a key ingredient in modelling the systematic uncertainties present in the analysis and testing of our cosmological pipelines. However, to reach the large volume and high precision required for galaxy surveys, we generally populate dark matter haloes with galaxies following certain theoretical recipes. Such recipes contain free parameters that are calibrated by comparing simulations against observations, but the creation of galaxy mocks is a stochastic process with a large number of free parameters to calibrate. Some approaches in the literature consist of fine-tuning these parameters one at a time, or they rely on computationally expensive Markov chain Monte Carlo exploration to find a reasonable agreement with observations. Here we present a new pipeline, based on the differential evolution algorithm, that can calibrate complex galaxy mocks in a fully automated way for realistic scenarios with a large parameter space. We applied the pipeline to galaxy mocks built on a combination of halo occupation distribution and abundance-matching techniques. We show that our pipeline can properly calibrate both Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) and modified gravity galaxy mocks against observations, leading to the production of one of the largest f ( R ) galaxy mock catalogues. This type of calibration pipeline provides a new tool for automating the calibration of future massive galaxy mocks.
Source: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Institutions: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institute of Space Sciences, Centre National d'Études Spatiales, Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya, Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Université de Toulouse, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, Observatoire de Paris, Sorbonne Université, Laboratoire d'Étude de l'Univers et des Phénomènes Extrêmes, The University of Tokyo, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Port d'Informació Científica, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Instituto de Astronomía Teórica y Experimental
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,865
Awards: G103507813, G1105844351, G1204740081, G1544644610, G1622782223, G2019505627, G2064873908, G2462415295, G2648730778, G2673512141, G2988934680, G3005324705, G302750986, G3261693824, G348919436, G3522231704, G3546882995, G3715634343, G3786881354, G410571670, G4212894969, G451917667, G4837197985, G491712853, G5099673792, G529962013, G5404395142, G5539308778, G5555131222, G5631495684, G5635532810, G5922099756, G5955501538, G5967599077, G6027777510, G6054710752, G617610489, G624877701, G6305471807, G6513613686, G69051668, G7044659667, G737202499, G7425137858, G7805626310, G7863371703, G8497050386, G8568794117, G929308097
OpenAlex ID: W7220443428