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wadawson / merging-cluster-dynamics-paper

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Compare with Springel & Farrar simulation over time #5

Closed wadawson closed 11 years ago

wadawson commented 11 years ago

Referee comment:

On a related note, claiming in the first place that the method is within 10% agreement with N-body simulations (plural) is over-stating things a bit. Once again, all that has been looked at is one snapshot from one simulation of one system. Ideally, one would compare results from the model with simulations for a variety of input parameters (mass ratios, merger velocities, concentration parameters, etc.) at a distribution of times (and a distribution of viewing angles) during the simulations to better characterize the accuracy of the model. I appreciate that running a series of N-body simulations for comparison is beyond the scope of this paper (and, in some sense, defeats the purpose of the model), but on the other hand it has yet to be shown that the model agrees with simulations to within 10% in general. If the author wishes to strengthen their case a bit further, I note that comparing results from the model to the one simulation considered (Springel & Farrar, 2007) over a spread of snapshot times is in principle easily done, as compared with running new simulations for comparison (assuming that merger parameters at other times in the simulation are available).

This should be feasible since Springel and Farrar plot these values over time/space, it will require me running my analysis over a range of parameters but this is possible. I just need to think about how best to do it and how long it will take.

wadawson commented 11 years ago

Response to the referee:

I thought that the referee's suggestion to perform the comparison with the Springel and Farrar (2007) simulation over the course of the merger was an excellent idea. I performed this comparison and significantly updated Section 2.3 of the paper. I believe that the paper benefited greatly from this suggestion (e.g. seeing that bias is relatively stable throughout the merger).

I also adjusted the text throughout the paper to clarify that the model is verified against a single simulation and has not been verified in general (which I agree with the referee is beyond the scope of this work).