Seminar by Juba Barrios-Ortiz on the topic of Detection of dwarf galaxies in ARRAKIHS

Seminar by Juba Barrios-Ortiz, from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, on the topic of detection of dwarf galaxies in ARRAKIHS.

Title: Detection of mock dwarf galaxies in simulated ARRAKIHS observations

Abstract: Dwarf galaxies provide crucial constraints on galaxy formation and cosmology, particularly in the low surface brightness (LSB) regime, where observational biases remain significant. The forthcoming ARRAKIHS mission, an ESA F-class survey targeting the low-surface-brightness (LSB) universe up to magnitude ~31 in four bands (two VIS, two NIR), will image ~80 Milky Way analogs to characterize stellar structures and probe stellar formation and accretion histories via intra-halo light and satellite populations. We present a pipeline for injection, detection, and identification of satellite galaxies using realistic mock ARRAKIHS-like images encompassing observational artifacts. Mock frames are generated from cosmological simulations and processed to match the expected instrumental characteristics and sky properties in all bands. Synthetic dwarf galaxies, modeled with analytical surface brightness profiles and spanning a range of masses and structural parameters, are injected into these backgrounds to create controlled datasets in order to evaluate detection sensitivity across surface brightness and scale parameters. We analyze detection trends as a function of surface brightness and mass, and explore how structural and multi-band color information can help distinguish dwarf candidates from background contaminants. Then, we test a machine-learning classification approach to evaluate the relative importance of multiparametric morphological and photometric descriptors for robust separation of genuine satellites from background galaxies. Preliminary results are promising.