CosmoGLINT: cosmological generative model for line intensity mapping with transformer

ABSTRACT Modelling star-forming galaxies is crucial for upcoming observations of large-scale matter and galaxy distributions with galaxy redshift surveys and line intensity mapping (LIM). We introduce CosmoGLINT (Cosmological Generative model for Line INtensity mapping with Transformer), a Transformer-based generative framework designed to create realistic galaxy populations from dark matter (DM)-only simulations. CosmoGLINT autoregressively generates sequences of galaxy properties – including star formation rate, distance to the halo centre, and radial and tangential velocities relative to the halo – conditioned on halo mass. Trained on the IllustrisTNG hydrodynamic simulation, the model reproduces key statistical properties of the original data, including the voxel intensity distribution and the power spectrum both in real and redshift space. It can efficiently generate a number of different realizations of the designated galaxy populations, enabling the creation of mock LIM/redshift survey catalogues from large halo catalogues produced by fast DM-only simulations. We show that our model, trained at multiple redshifts, can be applied to DM halo light-cone data to generate a realistic mock galaxy light-cone that incorporates the redshift evolution of the galaxy population. The mock catalogues can be readily used to derive statistical quantities and to develop data analysis pipelines for ongoing and future wide-field surveys.