http://arxiv.org/abs/1807.11180
We present a new, open source, free semi-analytic model (SAM), named Shark, which is designed to be highly flexible and modular, allowing an easy and systematic exploration of different physical processes and ways of modelling any one of them. We introduce the philosophy behind the building of Shark, and provide a detailed overview of the physical processes and their variants included in the model. Shark is written in C++11 and has been parallelized with OpenMP to allow for efficient exploration of models and parameters. In the version being released (v1.0), we implement several different models for gas cooling, active galactic nuclei, stellar and photo-ionisation feedback, and star formation. We demonstrate the basic performance of Shark using the SURFS simulations on the Planck15 cosmology, by comparing results against a large set of observations, including: the stellar mass function (SMF) and stellar-halo mass relation from z=0 to z=4; the cosmic evolution of the star formation rate density (SFRD), stellar mass, atomic and molecular hydrogen; local gas scaling relations; and structural galaxy properties, finding excellent agreement. Some of these are by construction, as parameters are, for example, tuned to the SMF at z=0, but most are true successes of Shark. We illustrate how Shark can be used to study the systematic effects of the modelling of different physical processes on the galaxy population, by quantifying the sensitivity of the scatter of the main sequence of star formation and the gas scaling relations on the adopted star formation law and of the SFRD and $\Omega_{\rm H_2}$ on the H$_2$ depletion timescale of starbursts. We compare Shark with other SAMs and the hydrodynamical simulation EAGLE, and find that SAMs have a much higher halo baryon fraction due to large amounts of intra-halo gas, which in the case of EAGLE is in the intergalactic medium.
C. Lagos, R. Tobar, A. Robotham, et. al.
Tue, 31 Jul 18
67/69
Comments: 31 pages, 17 figures. Submitted to MNRAS. Comments welcome!