An efficient hybrid method to produce high resolution large volume dark matter simulations for semi-analytic models of reionisation

Resolving faint galaxies in large volumes is critical for accurate cosmic reionisation simulations. While less demanding than hydrodynamical simulations, semi-analytic reionisation models still require very large N-body simulations in order to resolve the atomic cooling limit across the whole reionisation history within box sizes $\gtrsim 100 h^{-1}\text{Mpc}$. To facilitate this, we extend the mass resolution of N-body simulations using a Monte Carlo algorithm. Our extended halo catalogues are designed for semi-analytic galaxy formation models that utilise halo positions for reionisation calculations. To illustrate, we present an extended halo catalogue that reaches a mass resolution of $M_\text{halo} = 3.2 \times 10^7 h^{-1}\text{M}_\odot$ in a $105 h^{-1}\text{Mpc}$ box, equivalent to an N-body simulation with $\sim 6800^3$ particles. The results are verified using smaller volume N-body simulations with higher resolution. The extended halo catalogues are applied to the Meraxes semi-analytic reionisation model, producing stellar mass functions, star formation rate densities and volume-weighted neutral fractions that are consistent with those based on direct N-body halo merger trees up to $z \sim 10$. Comparison of high resolution large volume simulations with both small volume or low resolution simulations indicates that both low resolution and small volume simulations lead to reionisation ending too rapidly. Thus, both sufficient resolution and volume are required to correctly model the late stage of cosmic reionisation.