Speaker
Description
Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations are widely used to make predictions for the intracluster light (ICL), but the impact of numerical resolution on the tidal stripping of stars remains unclear. In particular, a simulation's ability to accurately capture the stellar disruption of satellite galaxies depends on both mass resolution and force softening, which influence the structure of galaxies and their dark matter halos and the efficiency of stellar stripping.
I examine how these factors affect stellar stripping efficiency across various orbits, satellite masses, and morphologies. While stripping is relatively insensitive to stellar mass resolution, resolving the central regions of satellite dark matter halos is crucial. Low-resolution simulations artificially flatten central density profiles, enhancing tidal stripping and leading to excessive stellar mass loss.
I find that dark matter mass resolutions of around 10^6 solar masses are required to reliably recover bulk ICL masses, suggesting that contemporary cosmological simulations may overestimate the total mass liberated. Finally, I discuss the implications of this over-stripping for the resolved and chemo-dynamical properties of the ICL.
