An accurate comprehensive approach to substructure: III. Masses and formation times of the host haloes

Abstract

With this paper, we complete a comprehensive study of substructure in dark matter haloes. In Paper I, we derived the radial distribution and mass function (MF) of accreted subhaloes (scaled to the radius and mass of the host halo) and showed that they are essentially universal. This is not the case, however, for those of stripped subhaloes, which depend on halo mass and assembly history. In Paper II, we derived these latter properties in the simplest case of purely accreting haloes. Here, we extend the study to ordinary haloes having suffered major mergers. After showing that all the properties of substructure are encoded in the mean truncated-to-original subhalo mass ratio profile, we demonstrate that the dependence of the subhalo MF on halo mass arises from their mass-dependent concentration, while the shape of the subhalo radial distribution depends on the time of the last major merger of the host halo. In this sense, the latter property is a better probe of halo formation time than the former. Unfortunately, this is not the case for the radial distribution of satellites as this profile is essentially disconnected from subhalo stripping and the properties of accreted subhaloes are independent of the halo formation time.