arXiv subjects

Frank C. van den Bosch

Publications and source records attributed to Frank C. van den Bosch.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

DASH: a library of dynamical subhalo evolution

The abundance and demographics of dark matter substructure is important for many areas in astrophysics and cosmological $N$-body simulations have been the primary tool used to investigate them. However, it has recently become clear that the simulations are subject to numerical artefacts, which hampers a proper treatment of the tidal evolution of subhaloes. Unfortunately, no analytical models that accurately describe subhalo evolution exist either. We therefore present a library of idealized, high resolution $N$-body simulations of the tidal evolution of individual subhaloes that can be used to calibrate semi-analytical models and to complement cosmological simulations. The simulations focus on minor mergers, i.e., the mass of the subhalo is much smaller than that of the host halo, such that the impact of dynamical friction is negligible. This setup allows the adoption of a fixed analytical potential for modelling the host halo. The dynamical evolution of subhaloes is followed with $N$-body computations. In the library, four parameters, two of which characterize the subhalo orbit with respect to the host halo, and the two concentrations of the host- and subhalo, are varied over the ranges encountered in cosmological simulations. We show several representative examples from the library that illustrate the evolution of the subhalo mass and velocity dispersion profiles. Additionally, we make publicly available a pre-trained non-parametric model of the subhalo mass evolution based on random forest regression. This model is able to interpolate the simulation data at the 0.1\,dex level and provides efficient access to the data for further use in modelling.

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arXiv2019

Cold Filamentary Accretion and the Formation of Metal Poor Globular Clusters and Halo Stars

We propose that cold filamentary accretion in massive galaxies at high redshift can lead to the formation of star-forming clumps in the halos of these galaxies without the presence of dark matter sub-structure. In certain cases, these clumps can be the birth places of metal poor globular-clusters (MP GCs). Using cosmological simulations, we show that narrow streams of dense gas feeding massive galaxies from the cosmic web can fragment, producing star-forming clumps. We then derive an analytical model for the properties of streams as a function of halo mass and redshift, and assess when these are gravitationally unstable, when this can lead to collapse and star-formation in the halo, and when it may result in the formation of MP GCs. For stream metalicities >~1% solar, this is likely to occur at z>4.5. At z~6, the collapsing clouds have masses of (5-10)x10^7 M_{sun} and the average stream pressure is ~10^6 K cm^{-3}. The conditions for GC formation are met in the extremely turbulent "eyewall" at ~0.3 R_{vir}, where counter-rotating streams can collide, driving very large densities. Our scenario can account for the observed kinematics and spatial distribution of MP GCs, the correlation between their mass and metalicity, and the mass ratio between the GC system and the host halo. For MW mass halos, we infer that ~30% of MP GCs could have formed in this way, the remainder likely accreted in mergers. Our predictions for GC formation along circumgalactic filaments at high-redshift are testable with JWST.

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arXiv2018

Constraining the mass density of free-floating black holes using razor-thin lensing arcs

Strong lensing of active galactic nuclei in the radio can result in razor-thin arcs, with a thickness of less than a milli-arcsecond, if observed at the resolution achievable with very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). Such razor-thin arcs provide a unique window on the coarseness of the matter distribution between source and observer. In this paper, we investigate to what extent such razor-thin arcs can constrain the number density and mass function of `free-floating' black holes, defined as black holes that do not, or no longer, reside at the centre of a galaxy. These can be either primordial in origin or arise as by-products of the evolution of super-massive black holes in galactic nuclei. When sufficiently close to the line of sight, free-floating black holes cause kink-like distortions in the arcs, which are detectable by eye in the VLBI images as long as the black hole mass exceeds $\sim 1000$ Solar masses. Using a crude estimate for the detectability of such distortions, we analytically compute constraints on the matter density of free-floating black holes resulting from null-detections of distortions along a realistic, fiducial arc, and find them to be comparable to those from quasar milli-lensing. We also use predictions from a large hydrodynamical simulation for the demographics of free-floating black holes that are not primordial in origin, and show that their predicted mass density is roughly four orders of magnitude below the constraints achievable with a single razor-thin arc.

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arXiv2018

Updated Results on the Galaxy-Halo Connection from Satellite Kinematics in SDSS

We present new results on the relationship between central galaxies and dark matter haloes inferred from observations of satellite kinematics in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7. We employ an updated analysis framework that includes detailed mock catalogues to model observational effects in SDSS. Our results constrain the colour-dependent conditional luminosity function (CLF) of dark matter haloes, as well as the radial profile of satellite galaxies. Confirming previous results, we find that red central galaxies live in more massive haloes than blue galaxies at fixed luminosity. Additionally, our results suggest that satellite galaxies have a radial profile less centrally concentrated than dark matter but not as cored as resolved subhaloes in dark matter-only simulations. Compared to previous works using satellite kinematics by More et al., we find much more competitive constraints on the galaxy-halo connection, on par with those derived from a combination of galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing. We compare our results on the galaxy-halo connection to other studies using galaxy clustering and group catalogues, showing very good agreement between these different techniques. We discuss future applications of satellite kinematics in the context of constraining cosmology and the relationship between galaxies and dark matter haloes.

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arXiv2018

Maturing Satellite Kinematics into a Competitive Probe of the Galaxy-Halo Connection

The kinematics of satellite galaxies moving in a dark matter halo are a direct probe of the underlying gravitational potential. Thus, the phase-space distributions of satellites represent a powerful tool to determine the galaxy-halo connection from observations. By stacking the signal of a large number of satellite galaxies this potential can be unlocked even for haloes hosting a few satellites on average. In this work, we test the impact of various modelling assumptions on constraints derived from analysing satellite phase-space distributions in the non-linear, 1-halo regime. We discuss their potential to explain the discrepancy between average halo masses derived from satellite kinematics and gravitational lensing previously reported. Furthermore, we develop an updated, more robust analysis to extract constraints on the galaxy-halo relation from satellite properties in spectroscopic galaxy surveys such as the SDSS. We test the accuracy of this approach using a large number of realistic mock catalogues. Furthermore, we find that constraints derived from such an analysis are complementary and competitive with respect to the commonly used galaxy clustering and galaxy-galaxy lensing observables.

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arXiv2018

Cosmological simulations of the circumgalactic medium with 1 kpc resolution: enhanced HI column densities

The circumgalactic medium (CGM), i.e. the gaseous haloes around galaxies, is both the reservoir of gas that fuels galaxy growth and the repository of gas expelled by galactic winds. Most cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations focus their computational effort on the galaxies themselves and treat the CGM more coarsely, which means small-scale structure cannot be resolved. We get around this issue by running zoom-in simulations of a Milky Way-mass galaxy with standard mass refinement and additional uniform spatial refinement within the virial radius. This results in a detailed view of its gaseous halo at unprecedented (1 kpc) uniform resolution with only a moderate increase in computational time. The improved spatial resolution does not impact the central galaxy or the average density of the CGM. However, it drastically changes the radial profile of the neutral hydrogen column density, which is enhanced at galactocentric radii larger than 40 kpc. The covering fraction of Lyman-Limit Systems within 150 kpc is almost doubled. We therefore conclude that some of the observational properties of the CGM are strongly resolution dependent. Increasing the resolution in the CGM, without increasing the resolution of the galaxies, is a promising and computationally efficient method to push the boundaries of state-of-the-art simulations.

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arXiv2018

The dearth of difference between central and satellite galaxies II. Comparison of observations with L-GALAXIES and EAGLE in star formation quenching

As we demonstrated in Paper I, the quenched fractions of central and satellite galaxies as function of halo mass are extremely similar, as long as one controls for stellar mass. The same holds for the quenched fractions as a function of central velocity dispersion, which is tightly correlated with black hole mass, as long as one controls for both stellar and halo mass. Here we use mock galaxy catalogs constructed from the latest semi-analytic model, L-GALAXIES, and the state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulation, EAGLE, to investigate whether these models can reproduce the trends seen in the data. We also check how the group finder used to identify centrals and satellites impacts our results. We find that L-GALAXIES fails to reproduce the trends. The predicted quenched fraction of central galaxies increases sharply with halo mass around $10^{12.5}h^{-1}M_{\odot}$ and with black hole mass around $\sim10^{6.5}M_{\odot}$, while the predicted quenched fraction of satellites increases with both halo and black hole masses gradually. In contrast, centrals and satellites in EAGLE follow almost the same trend as seen in the data. We discuss the implications of our results for how feedback processes regulate galaxy quenching.

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arXiv2018

Mapping the Real Space Distributions of Galaxies in SDSS DR7: II. Measuring the growth rate, clustering amplitude of matter and biases of galaxies at redshift $0.1$

We extend the real-space mapping method developed in Shi et at. (2016) so that it can be applied to flux-limited galaxy samples. We use an ensemble of mock catalogs to demonstrate the reliability of this extension, showing that it allows for an accurate recovery of the real-space correlation functions and galaxy biases. We also demonstrate that, using an iterative method applied to intermediate-scale clustering data, we can obtain an unbiased estimate of the growth rate of structure $fσ_8$, which is related to the clustering amplitude of matter, to an accuracy of $\sim 10\%$. Applying this method to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7), we construct a real-space galaxy catalog spanning the redshift range $0.01 \leq z \leq 0.2$, which contains 584,473 galaxies in the north Galactic cap (NGC). Using this data, we infer $\fss$ at a median redshift $z=0.1$, which is consistent with the WMAP9 cosmology at the $1σ$ level. By combining this measurement with the real-space clustering of galaxies and with galaxy-galaxy weak lensing measurements for the same sets of galaxies, we are able to break the degeneracy between $f$, $σ_8$, and $b$. From the SDSS DR7 data alone, we obtain the following cosmological constraints at redshift $z=0.1$: $f=$$0.464^{+0.040}_{-0.040}$, $σ_8=0.769^{+0.121}_{-0.089}$, and $b=1.910^{+0.234}_{-0.268}$, $1.449^{+0.194}_{-0.196}$, $1.301^{+0.170}_{-0.177}$, and $1.196^{+0.159}_{-0.161}~$ for galaxies within different absolute magnitude bins $^{0.1}{\rm M}_r-5\log h=[-23,0, -22.0], [-22,0, -21.0], [-21.0, -20.0]$ and $[-20.0, -19.0]$, respectively.

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arXiv2018

The Dearth of Difference between Central and Satellite Galaxies I. Perspectives on star formation quenching and AGN activities

We investigate the quenching properties of central and satellite galaxies, utilizing the halo masses and central-satellite identifications from the SDSS galaxy group catalog of Yang et al. We find that the quenched fractions of centrals and satellites of similar stellar masses have similar dependence on host halo mass. The similarity of the two populations is also found in terms of specific star formation rate and 4000 Å break. The quenched fractions of centrals and satellites of similar masses show similar dependencies on bulge-to-total light ratio, central velocity dispersion and halo-centric distance in halos of given halo masses. The prevalence of optical/radio-loud AGNs is found to be similar for centrals and satellites at given stellar masses. All these findings strongly suggest that centrals and satellites of similar masses experience similar quenching processes in their host halos. We discuss implications of our results for the understanding of galaxy quenching.

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arXiv2018

ELUCID V. Lighting dark matter halos with galaxies

In a recent study, using the distribution of galaxies in the north galactic pole of SDSS DR7 region enclosed in a 500$\mpch$ box, we carried out our ELUCID simulation (Wang et al. 2016, ELUCID III). Here we {\it light} the dark matter halos and subhalos in the reconstructed region in the simulation with galaxies in the SDSS observations using a novel {\it neighborhood} abundance matching method. Before we make use of thus established galaxy-subhalo connections in the ELUCID simulation to evaluate galaxy formation models, we set out to explore the reliability of such a link. For this purpose, we focus on the following a few aspects of galaxies: (1) the central-subhalo luminosity and mass relations; (2) the satellite fraction of galaxies; (3) the conditional luminosity function (CLF) and conditional stellar mass function (CSMF) of galaxies; and (4) the cross correlation functions between galaxies and the dark matter particles, most of which are measured separately for all, red and blue galaxy populations. We find that our neighborhood abundance matching method accurately reproduces the central-subhalo relations, satellite fraction, the CLFs and CSMFs and the biases of galaxies. These features ensure that thus established galaxy-subhalo connections will be very useful in constraining galaxy formation processes. And we provide some suggestions on the three levels of using the galaxy-subhalo pairs for galaxy formation constraints. The galaxy-subhalo links and the subhalo merger trees in the SDSS DR7 region extracted from our ELUCID simulation are available upon request.

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arXiv2018

Modelling the line-of-sight contribution in substructure lensing

We investigate how Einstein rings and magnified arcs are affected by small-mass dark-matter haloes placed along the line-of-sight to gravitational lens systems. By comparing the gravitational signature of line-of-sight haloes with that of substructures within the lensing galaxy, we derive a mass-redshift relation that allows us to rescale the detection threshold (i.e. lowest detectable mass) for substructures to a detection threshold for line-of-sight haloes at any redshift. We then quantify the line-of-sight contribution to the total number density of low-mass objects that can be detected through strong gravitational lensing. Finally, we assess the degeneracy between substructures and line-of-sight haloes of different mass and redshift to provide a statistical interpretation of current and future detections, with the aim of distinguishing between CDM and WDM. We find that line-of-sight haloes statistically dominate with respect to substructures, by an amount that strongly depends on the source and lens redshifts, and on the chosen dark matter model. Substructures represent about 30 percent of the total number of perturbers for low lens and source redshifts (as for the SLACS lenses), but less than 10 per cent for high redshift systems. We also find that for data with high enough signal-to-noise ratio and angular resolution, the non-linear effects arising from a double-lens-plane configuration are such that one is able to observationally recover the line-of-sight halo redshift with an absolute error precision of 0.15 at the 68 per cent confidence level.

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arXiv2018

Dark Matter Substructure in Numerical Simulations: A Tale of Discreteness Noise, Runaway Instabilities, and Artificial Disruption

To gain understanding of the complicated, non-linear and numerical processes associated with the tidal evolution of dark matter subhaloes in numerical simulation, we perform a large suite of idealized simulations that follow individual N-body subhaloes in a fixed, analytical host halo potential. By varying both physical and numerical parameters, we investigate under what conditions the subhaloes undergo disruption. We confirm the conclusions from our more analytical assessment in van den Bosch et al. that most disruption is numerical in origin; as long as a subhalo is resolved with sufficient mass and force resolution, a bound remnant survives. This implies that state-of-the-art cosmological simulations still suffer from significant overmerging. We demonstrate that this is mainly due to inadequate force-softening, which causes excessive mass loss and artificial tidal disruption. In addition, we show that subhaloes in N-body simulations are susceptible to a runaway instability triggered by the amplification of discreteness noise in the presence of a tidal field. These two processes conspire to put serious limitations on the reliability of dark matter substructure in state-of-the-art cosmological simulations. We present two criteria that can be used to assess whether individual subhaloes in cosmological simulations are reliable or not, and advocate that subhaloes that satisfy either of these two criteria be discarded from further analysis. We discuss the potential implications of this work for several areas in astrophysics.

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arXiv2017

Brightest galaxies as halo centre tracers in SDSS DR7

Determining the positions of halo centres in large-scale structure surveys is crucial for many cosmological studies. A common assumption is that halo centres correspond to the location of their brightest member galaxies. In this paper, we study the dynamics of brightest galaxies with respect to other halo members in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7. Specifically, we look at the line-of-sight velocity and spatial offsets between brightest galaxies and their neighbours. We compare those to detailed mock catalogues, constructed from high-resolution, dark-matter-only $N$-body simulations, in which it is assumed that satellite galaxies trace dark matter subhaloes. This allows us to place constraints on the fraction $f_{\rm BNC}$ of haloes in which the brightest galaxy is not the central. Compared to previous studies we explicitly take into account the unrelaxed state of the host haloes, velocity offsets of halo cores and correlations between $f_{\rm BNC}$ and the satellite occupation. We find that $f_{\rm BNC}$ strongly decreases with the luminosity of the brightest galaxy and increases with the mass of the host halo. Overall, in the halo mass range $10^{13} - 10^{14.5} h^{-1} M_\odot$ we find $f_{\rm BNC} \sim 30\%$, in good agreement with a previous study by Skibba et al. We discuss the implications of these findings for studies inferring the galaxy--halo connection from satellite kinematics, models of the conditional luminosity function and galaxy formation in general.

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arXiv2017

Disruption of Dark Matter Substructure: Fact or Fiction?

Accurately predicting the demographics of dark matter (DM) substructure is of paramount importance for many fields of astrophysics, including gravitational lensing, galaxy evolution, halo occupation modeling, and constraining the nature of dark matter. Because of its strongly non-linear nature, DM substructure is typically modeled using N-body simulations, which reveal that large fractions of DM subhaloes undergo complete disruption. In this paper we use both analytical estimates and idealized numerical simulations to investigate whether this disruption is mainly physical, due to tidal heating and stripping, or numerical (i.e., artificial). We show that, contrary to naive expectation, subhaloes that experience a tidal shock $ΔE$ that exceeds the subhalo's binding energy, $|E_{\rm b}|$, do not undergo disruption, even when $ΔE/|E_{\rm b}|$ is as large as 100. Along the same line, and contrary to existing claims in the literature, instantaneously stripping matter from the outskirts of a DM subhalo also does not result in its complete disruption, even when the instantaneous remnant has positive binding energy. In addition, we show that tidal heating due to high-speed (impulsive) encounters with other subhaloes (`harassment'), is negligible compared to the tidal effects due to the host halo. Hence, we conclude that, in the absence of baryonic processes, the complete, physical disruption of CDM substructure is extremely rare, and that most disruption in numerical simulations therefore must be artificial. We discuss various processes that have been associated with numerical overmerging, and conclude that inadequate force-softening is the most likely culprit.

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arXiv2017

ELUCID IV: Galaxy Quenching and its Relation to Halo Mass, Environment, and Assembly Bias

We examine the quenched fraction of central and satellite galaxies as a function of galaxy stellar mass, halo mass, and the matter density of their large scale environment. Matter densities are inferred from our ELUCID simulation, a constrained simulation of local Universe sampled by SDSS, while halo masses and central/satellite classification are taken from the galaxy group catalog of Yang et al. The quenched fraction for the total population increases systematically with the three quantities. We find that the `environmental quenching efficiency', which quantifies the quenched fraction as function of halo mass, is independent of stellar mass. And this independence is the origin of the stellar mass-independence of density-based quenching efficiency, found in previous studies. Considering centrals and satellites separately, we find that the two populations follow similar correlations of quenching efficiency with halo mass and stellar mass, suggesting that they have experienced similar quenching processes in their host halo. We demonstrate that satellite quenching alone cannot account for the environmental quenching efficiency of the total galaxy population and the difference between the two populations found previously mainly arises from the fact that centrals and satellites of the same stellar mass reside, on average, in halos of different mass. After removing these halo-mass and stellar-mass effects, there remains a weak, but significant, residual dependence on environmental density, which is eliminated when halo assembly bias is taken into account. Our results therefore indicate that halo mass is the prime environmental parameter that regulates the quenching of both centrals and satellites.

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arXiv2017

The Immitigable Nature of Assembly Bias: The Impact of Halo Definition on Assembly Bias

Dark matter halo clustering depends not only on halo mass, but also on other properties such as concentration and shape. This phenomenon is known broadly as assembly bias. We explore the dependence of assembly bias on halo definition, parametrized by spherical overdensity parameter, $Δ$. We summarize the strength of concentration-, shape-, and spin-dependent halo clustering as a function of halo mass and halo definition. Concentration-dependent clustering depends strongly on mass at all $Δ$. For conventional halo definitions ($Δ\sim 200\mathrm{m}-600\mathrm{m}$), concentration-dependent clustering at low mass is driven by a population of haloes that is altered through interactions with neighbouring haloes. Concentration-dependent clustering can be greatly reduced through a mass-dependent halo definition with $Δ\sim 20\mathrm{m}-40\mathrm{m}$ for haloes with $M_{200\mathrm{m}} \lesssim 10^{12}\, h^{-1}\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$. Smaller $Δ$ implies larger radii and mitigates assembly bias at low mass by subsuming altered, so-called backsplash haloes into now larger host haloes. At higher masses ($M_{200\mathrm{m}} \gtrsim 10^{13}\, h^{-1}\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$) larger overdensities, $Δ\gtrsim 600\mathrm{m}$, are necessary. Shape- and spin-dependent clustering are significant for all halo definitions that we explore and exhibit a relatively weaker mass dependence. Generally, both the strength and the sense of assembly bias depend on halo definition, varying significantly even among common definitions. We identify no halo definition that mitigates all manifestations of assembly bias. A halo definition that mitigates assembly bias based on one halo property (e.g., concentration) must be mass dependent. The halo definitions that best mitigate concentration-dependent halo clustering do not coincide with the expected average splashback radii at fixed halo mass.

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arXiv2017

The Galaxy Clustering Crisis in Abundance Matching

Galaxy clustering on small scales is significantly under-predicted by sub-halo abundance matching (SHAM) models that populate (sub-)haloes with galaxies based on peak halo mass, $M_{\rm peak}$. SHAM models based on the peak maximum circular velocity, $V_{\rm peak}$, have had much better success. The primary reason $M_{\rm peak}$ based models fail is the relatively low abundance of satellite galaxies produced in these models compared to those based on $V_{\rm peak}$. Despite success in predicting clustering, a simple $V_{\rm peak}$ based SHAM model results in predictions for galaxy growth that are at odds with observations. We evaluate three possible remedies that could "save" mass-based SHAM: (1) SHAM models require a significant population of "orphan" galaxies as a result of artificial disruption/merging of sub-haloes in modern high resolution dark matter simulations; (2) satellites must grow significantly after their accretion; and (3) stellar mass is significantly affected by halo assembly history. No solution is entirely satisfactory. However, regardless of the particulars, we show that popular SHAM models based on $M_{\rm peak}$ cannot be complete physical models as presented. Either $V_{\rm peak}$ truly is a better predictor of stellar mass at $z\sim 0$ and it remains to be seen how the correlation between stellar mass and $V_{\rm peak}$ comes about, or SHAM models are missing vital component(s) that significantly affect galaxy clustering.

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arXiv2016

Dissecting the Evolution of Dark Matter Subhaloes in the Bolshoi Simulation

We present a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of dark matter subhaloes in the cosmological Bolshoi simulation. We identify a complete set of 12 unique evolution channels by which subhaloes evolve in between simulation outputs, and study their relative importance and demographics. We show that instantaneous masses and maximum circular velocities of individual subhaloes are extremely noisy, despite the use of a sophisticated, phase-space-based halo finder. We also show that subhaloes experience frequent penetrating encounters with other subhaloes (on average about one per dynamical time), and that subhaloes whose apo-center lies outside the virial radius of their host (the 'ejected' or 'backsplash' haloes) experience tidal forces that modify their orbits. This results in an average fractional subhalo exchange rate among host haloes of roughly 0.01 per Gyr (at the present time). In addition, we show that there are three distinct disruption channels; one in which subhaloes drop below the mass resolution limit of the simulation, one in which subhaloes merge with their host halo largely driven by dynamical friction, and one in which subhaloes abruptly disintegrate. We estimate that roughly 80 percent of all subhalo disruption in the Bolshoi simulation is numerical, rather than physical. This over-merging is a serious road-block for the use of numerical simulations to interpret small scale clustering, or for any other study that is sensitive to the detailed demographics of dark matter substructure.

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