Spatially resolved mock observations of stellar kinematics : full radiative transfer treatment of simulated galaxies

We present a framework to build realistic mock spectroscopic observations for state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulations, using high spectral resolution stellar population models and full radiative transfer treatment with SKIRT. As a first application we generate stellar continuum mock observations...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Main Authors: Barrientos Acevedo, Daniela, van der Wel, Arjen, Baes, Maarten, Grand, Robert J. J., Kapoor, Anand Utsav, Camps, Peter, de Graaff, Anna, Straatman, Caroline, Bezanson, Rachel
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Physics and Astronomy
Astronomy and Astrophysics
radiative transfer
galaxies: kinematics and dynamics
INTEGRAL FIELD SPECTROSCOPY
SAURON PROJECT
ILLUSTRISTNG SIMULATIONS
ANGULAR-MOMENTUM
DISC GALAXIES
TRANSFER CODE
SLOW ROTATORS
DATA RELEASE
DUST
SAMI
sami
Online Access:https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/01H50SCTY665YPC93ZG5H2K1VP
http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-01H50SCTY665YPC93ZG5H2K1VP
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad1771
https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/01H50SCTY665YPC93ZG5H2K1VP/file/01H50SGD98S7EMVZ5YQJJ9TF95
Description
Summary:We present a framework to build realistic mock spectroscopic observations for state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulations, using high spectral resolution stellar population models and full radiative transfer treatment with SKIRT. As a first application we generate stellar continuum mock observations for the Auriga cosmological zoom simulations emulating integral-field observations from the SAMI Galaxy survey. We perform spectral fitting on our synthetic cubes and compute the resulting rotation velocity (Vrot) and velocity dispersion within 1Re (σe) for a sub-set of the Auriga sample. We find that the kinematics produced by Auriga are in good agreement with the observations from the SAMI Galaxy survey after taking into account the effects of dust and the systematics produced by the observation limitations. We also explore the effects of seeing convolution, inclination, and attenuation on the line-of-sight velocity distribution. For highly inclined galaxies, these effects can lead to an artificial decrease in the measured V/σ by nearly a factor two (after inclination correction). We also demonstrate the utility of our method for high-redshift galaxies by emulating spatially resolved continuum spectra from the LEGA-C survey and, looking forward, E-ELT HARMONI. Our framework represents a crucial link between the ground truth for stellar populations and kinematics in simulations and the observed stellar continuum observations at low and high redshift.

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