Galaxy Catalog Analysis Example: Mean infall velocity into cluster BCGs

In this example we’ll show how to calculate the mean infall velocity of galaxies towards the cluster BCGs. In particular, we’ll use the Behroozi10SmHm model to paint stellar masses onto subhalos, and then we’ll select a population of \(M_{\ast}/M_{\odot}>10^{11.75}\) galaxies as our BCG sample, and \(10^{10.75}<M_{\ast}/M_{\odot}<10^{11}\) galaxies as the population we’ll use as tracers of the velocity field.

There is also an IPython Notebook in the following location that can be used as a companion to the material in this section of the tutorial:

halotools/docs/notebooks/galcat_analysis/basic_examples/galaxy_catalog_analysis_tutorial6.ipynb

By following this tutorial together with this notebook, you can play around with your own variations of the calculation as you learn the basic syntax.

Generate a mock galaxy catalog

Let’s start out by generating a mock galaxy catalog into an N-body simulation in the usual way. Here we’ll assume you have the z=0 rockstar halos for the multidark simulation, which we use to make sure we have enough BCGs.

from halotools.empirical_models import PrebuiltSubhaloModelFactory
model = PrebuiltSubhaloModelFactory('smhm_binary_sfr')
from halotools.sim_manager import CachedHaloCatalog
halocat = CachedHaloCatalog(simname = 'multidark', redshift = 0, halo_finder = 'rockstar')
model.populate_mock(halocat)

Our mock galaxies are stored in the galaxy_table of model.mock in the form of an Astropy Table.

Extract the position and velocity coordinates

To calculate the mean radial velocity between two sets of points, we need to know both their positions and velocities. As described in Formatting your xyz coordinates for Mock Observables calculations, functions in the mock_observables package such as mean_radial_velocity_vs_r take array inputs in a specific form: a (Npts, 3)-shape Numpy array. You can use the return_xyz_formatted_array convenience function for this purpose, which we will do after first selecting a tracer and a BCG population of mock galaxies.

from halotools.mock_observables import return_xyz_formatted_array

cluster_central_mask = (model.mock.galaxy_table['stellar_mass'] > 10**11.5)
cluster_centrals = model.mock.galaxy_table[cluster_central_mask]

low_mass_tracers_mask = ((model.mock.galaxy_table['stellar_mass'] > 10**10) &
                         (model.mock.galaxy_table['stellar_mass'] < 10**10.5))
low_mass_tracers = model.mock.galaxy_table[low_mass_tracers_mask]

cluster_pos = return_xyz_formatted_array(cluster_centrals['x'],
    cluster_centrals['y'] ,cluster_centrals['z'])
cluster_vel = return_xyz_formatted_array(cluster_centrals['vx'],
    cluster_centrals['vy'] ,cluster_centrals['vz'])

low_mass_tracers_pos = return_xyz_formatted_array(low_mass_tracers['x'],
    low_mass_tracers['y'], low_mass_tracers['z'])
low_mass_tracers_vel = return_xyz_formatted_array(low_mass_tracers['vx'],
    low_mass_tracers['vy'], low_mass_tracers['vz'])

Calculate \(<V_{\rm rad}>(r)\)

from halotools.mock_observables import mean_radial_velocity_vs_r

rbins = np.logspace(-0.5, 1.25, 15)
rbin_midpoints = (rbins[1:] + rbins[:-1])/2.

vr_clusters = mean_radial_velocity_vs_r(cluster_pos, cluster_vel, rbins_absolute=rbins,
                    sample2=low_mass_tracers_pos, velocities2=low_mass_tracers_vel,
                    period = model.mock.Lbox, do_auto=False, do_cross=True)

Plot the result

fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 1)

__=ax.plot(rbin_midpoints, vr_clusters, color='k')
xscale = ax.set_xscale('log')

xlim = ax.set_xlim(xmin=0.5, xmax=20)

xlabel = ax.set_xlabel(r'$r $  $\rm{[Mpc]}$', fontsize=15)
ylabel = ax.set_ylabel(r'$\langle V_{\rm rad}\rangle$  $[{\rm km/s}]$', fontsize=15)
title = ax.set_title('Radial infall velocity into cluster BCGs', fontsize=15)

As shown in the plot, as galaxies approach the neighborhood of a BCG, on average they tend to fall towards it. Spatial separations that are on the order of the halo radius of the BCG correspond to the multi-stream region where the velocities of the tracer galaxies start to virialize with the cluster halo. This is why we see the upturn in the mean radial velocity on scales ~3 Mpc.

This tutorial continues with Galaxy Catalog Analysis Example: Cluster BCG radial velocity dispersion profile.