Siblings, friends and acquaintances: Testing galaxy association methods

In order to constraint the limitations of association methods applied to galaxy surveys, we analysed the catalogue of halos at $z=0$ of a cosmological simulation, trying to reproduce the limitations that an observational survey deal with. We focused in the percolation method, usually called Friends of Friends method, commonly used in literature. The analysis was carried on the dark matter cosmological simulation MDPL2, from the Multidark project. Results point to a large fraction of contaminants for massive halos in high density environments. Thresholds in the association parameters and the subsequent analysis of observational properties can mitigate the occurrence of fake positives. The use of tests for substructures can also be efficient in particular cases.
Comment: Accepted in MNRAS