Quantify systematic differences between mock-observed and simulation-derived properties across surveys

Quantify the magnitude of systematic differences between dwarf galaxy properties estimated via observational survey pipelines applied to resolved-star photometry and the corresponding values derived directly from simulations, across a wide range of surveys and galaxy distances.

Background

The study demonstrates that hierarchical assembly creates multi-component light profiles leading to systematic offsets when recovering structural parameters with methods assuming single-component profiles, and that CMD shot noise can introduce significant uncertainties when few stars are observable.

These findings imply that standard observational pipelines may yield biased estimates (e.g., total V-band magnitude, half-light radius, and mean iron abundance) compared to simulation-derived quantities, motivating a systematic quantification of these differences across diverse survey conditions.

References

While the magnitude of these differences is left to be quantified across a wide range of surveys for galaxies at all distances, this work underscores the importance of self-consistently accounting for the full cosmological history rather than assuming idealized objects when testing observational pipelines (but see, e.g., Mutlu-Pakdil et al. 2021).

— EDGE-INFERNO: Simulating every observable star in faint dwarf galaxies and their consequences for resolved-star photometric surveys  (2409.08073 - Andersson et al., 2024) in Section 5 (Discussion and Conclusion), Page 7

In contrast, this non-monotonic trend is not reproduced by TNG50 and EAGLE, both of which predict a roughly constant $$ below $\log M_\star{=}9.6$. It is still unclear whether this discrepancy is due to observational systematics or the more fundamental differences in our understanding of galaxy formation physics, which we will explore in future work.

— Extending the Stellar-to-Halo Mass Relation to Dwarf Galaxies with DESI DR1  (2609.04351 - Shao et al., 3 Sep 2026) in Section 5.2, “Satellite Fractions” (subsection labeled sec:results_fsat)