Impact of stellar population synthesis choices on forward modelling-based redshift distribution estimates

Abstract

The forward modelling of galaxy surveys has recently gathered interest as one of the primary methods to achieve the required precision on the estimate of the redshift distributions for stage IV surveys. One of the key aspects of forward modelling a galaxy survey is the connection between the physical properties drawn from a galaxy population model and the intrinsic SEDs, achieved through SPS codes (e.g. FSPS). However, SPS requires a large number of detailed assumptions on the constituents of galaxies, for which the model choice or parameter values are currently uncertain. In this work, we perform a sensitivity study of the impact that the variations of the SED modelling choices have on the mean and scatter of the tomographic galaxy redshift distributions. We assumed the Prospector beta model as the fiducial input galaxy population model and used its SPS parameters to build 9 bands magnitudes of a fiducial sample of galaxies. We then built samples of galaxy magnitudes by varying one SED modelling choice at a time. We modelled the colour redshift relation of these galaxy samples using the SOM approach. We placed galaxies in the SOM cells according to their observed frame colours and used their cell assignment to build colour selected tomographic bins. Finally, we compared each variant's binned redshift distributions against the estimates obtained for the fiducial model. We find that the SED components related to the IMF, AGNs, gas physics, and the attenuation law substantially bias the mean and the scatter of the tomographic redshift distributions with respect to those estimated with the fiducial model. Regardless of the applied stellar mass function based re-weighting strategy, the bias in the mean and the scatter of the tomographic redshift distributions are greater than the precision requirements set by next-generation Stage IV galaxy surveys, such as LSST and Euclid.

Accepted for publication in A&A. 29 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (39)

• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA)
• Cosmic Star Formation History
• Infrared Emission from Interstellar Dust. IV. The Silicate-Graphite-PAH Model in the Post-Spitzer Era
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling I: The relevance of uncertain aspects of stellar evolution and the IMF to the derived physical properties of galaxies
• K-corrections and filter transformations in the ultraviolet, optical, and near infrared
• 3D-HST WFC3-selected Photometric Catalogs in the Five CANDELS/3D-HST Fields: Photometry, Photometric Redshifts and Stellar Masses
• Physical Properties of Wolf-Rayet Stars
• UltraVISTA: a new ultra-deep near-infrared survey in COSMOS
• The Milky Way's Circular Velocity Curve to 60 kpc and an Estimate of the Dark Matter Halo Mass from Kinematics of ~2400 SDSS Blue Horizontal Branch Stars
• Active Galactic Nuclei: what's in a name?
• AGN Dusty Tori: I. Handling of Clumpy Media
• PRIMUS: Constraints on Star Formation Quenching and Galaxy Merging, and the Evolution of the Stellar Mass Function From z=0-1
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: Sixteenth Data Release
• GALEX-SDSS-WISE Legacy Catalog (GSWLC): Star Formation Rates, Stellar Masses and Dust Attenuations of 700,000 Low-redshift Galaxies
• Evolution of asymptotic giant branch stars I. Updated synthetic TP-AGB models and their basic calibration
• The Mass-Metallicity and the Fundamental Metallicity Relation revisited on a fully Te-based abundance scale for galaxies
• Evidence for TP-AGB stars in high redshift galaxies, and their effect on deriving stellar population parameters
• The galaxy stellar mass function at 3.5<z<7.5 in the CANDELS/UDS, GOODS-South, and HUDF fields
• The MOSDEF Survey: Excitation Properties of $z\sim 2.3$ Star-forming Galaxies
• The Complete Calibration of the Color-Redshift Relation (C3R2) Survey: Analysis and Data Release 2
• Photometric Redshifts for Next-Generation Surveys
• The Scaling of Stellar Mass and Central Stellar Velocity Dispersion for Quiescent galaxies at z < 0.7
• Modelling type 1 quasar colours in the era of Rubin and Euclid
• Inferring More from Less: Prospector as a Photometric Redshift Engine in the Era of JWST
• Self-consistent predictions for LIER-like emission lines from post-AGB stars
• Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): Identification of AGN through SED Fitting and the Evolution of the Bolometric AGN Luminosity Function
• Circumstellar Dust Around AGB Stars and Implications for Infrared Emission from Galaxies
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): The inferred mass--metallicity relation from z=0 to 3.5 via forensic SED fitting
• Implications of a Temperature Dependent IMF I: Photometric Template Fitting
• The Frequency of Field Blue-Straggler Stars in the Thick Disk and Halo System of the Galaxy
• A few StePS forward in unveiling the complexity of galaxy evolution: light-weighted stellar ages of intermediate redshift galaxies with WEAVE
• Galaxy surveys, inhomogeneous reionization, and dark energy
• DEVILS: Cosmic evolution of SED-derived metallicities and their connection to star-formation histories
• The Blue Stragglers of the Old Open Cluster NGC 188
• Clean catalogues of blue horizontal-branch stars using Gaia EDR3
• Mass Metallicity Relationship of SDSS Star Forming Galaxies: Population Synthesis Analysis and Effects of Star Burst Length, Extinction Law, Initial Mass Function and Star Formation Rate
• WEAVE-StePS. A stellar population survey using WEAVE at WHT
• Instrumental systematics and weak gravitational lensing
• The 2175 Angstrom Interstellar Extinction Bump: Is the Wavelength Variable?