The Dynamical Mass Profiles of Galaxy Groups - Application to IllustrisTNG-300
Abstract
We present a new rescaling and stacking method to test cold dark matter predictions through the dynamical modelling of galaxy groups using the Jeans equation. We test the viability of this method on idealised, line-of-sight group data at z=0 in the IllustrisTNG-300 simulation, using subhalos and satellite galaxies as tracers. Dynamical mass profiles are measured using the code `Gravsphere' for seven distinct quality cuts, three on the dark matter substructure and four on the `visible' satellite galaxies. When using the dark matter substructure, we find that selecting subhalos by their infall time onto the group provides the best recovery of the true mass profile. When using satellite galaxies we instead find that selecting quenched satellites provides the best recovery. In both cases the mass profile is recovered within <1σ of the true value up to ∼ 1.5 times the median host virial radius. However, we also find the recovered velocity anisotropy to be biased towards negative values for all seven of our subhalo samples beyond the median host virial radius. This suggests dynamical systematics may still be present in the data, which will need to be quantified in future work before application to surveys.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{russell2026dynamical,
title = {{The Dynamical Mass Profiles of Galaxy Groups - Application to IllustrisTNG-300}},
author = {Alfie Russell and Rita Tojeiro and Anne-Marie Weijmans},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.41796},
eprint = {2610.41796},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41796},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Dynamical Mass Profiles of Galaxy Groups - Application to IllustrisTNG-300
AU - Alfie Russell
AU - Rita Tojeiro
AU - Anne-Marie Weijmans
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.41796
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41796
AB - We present a new rescaling and stacking method to test cold dark matter predictions through the dynamical modelling of galaxy groups using the Jeans equation. We test the viability of this method on idealised, line-of-sight group data at z=0 in the IllustrisTNG-300 simulation, using subhalos and satellite galaxies as tracers. Dynamical mass profiles are measured using the code `Gravsphere' for seven distinct quality cuts, three on the dark matter substructure and four on the `visible' satellite galaxies. When using the dark matter substructure, we find that selecting subhalos by their infall time onto the group provides the best recovery of the true mass profile. When using satellite galaxies we instead find that selecting quenched satellites provides the best recovery. In both cases the mass profile is recovered within <1σ of the true value up to ∼ 1.5 times the median host virial radius. However, we also find the recovered velocity anisotropy to be biased towards negative values for all seven of our subhalo samples beyond the median host virial radius. This suggests dynamical systematics may still be present in the data, which will need to be quantified in future work before application to surveys.
ER -