Finding protoclusters to trace galaxy evolution – I. The finder and its performance.

We develop a method to identify protoclusters based on dark matter haloes represented by galaxy groups selected from surveys of galaxies at high redshift. We test the performance of this method on haloes in N -body simulations, and find that it can correctly identify more than 85 per cent of the true protoclusters with |$\gtrsim 95$|  per cent purity and with mass estimates typically within 0.25 dex from their true values. We show how the information provided by the protoclusters can be used to link galaxies in present-day clusters of galaxies with their high-redshift progenitors. Our tests show that the protoclusters identified by our method can recover reliably the progenitor stellar mass distribution of galaxies, thereby providing an avenue to investigate the formation and evolution of present-day galaxy clusters and their member galaxies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]