Cause of satellite subhalo-mass radial bias

Identify the cause of the systematic overprediction of subhalo masses for satellite galaxies near the central galaxy and underprediction for satellites farther from the central, including whether particle-membership misassignment between subhalos and host halos is responsible.

Background

The satellite-galaxy analysis finds a radial trend in prediction errors: satellites close to the host central tend to have overpredicted subhalo masses, whereas more distant satellites tend to have underpredicted masses. The authors suggest that incorrect assignment of particles between satellite subhalos and their underlying host halos may explain the pattern, but explicitly state that the actual cause remains unknown.