Simulations of Galaxy Halos for the ARRAKIHS Space Missions to Unveil the Nature of Dark Matter

We present state-of-the-art simulations of ultra low Surface Brightness (SB) galaxy halo images observed through the iSIM camera on board a satellite in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Within the framework of the ESA-ARRAKIHS F mission, these simulations demonstrate the ability of both missions to reach SB=31 mag/arcsec2 (3σ, 10 × 10 arcsec2) in VIS and NIR wavelength ranges after modeling in detail each effect involved in an actual observations from LEO. The simulations take into account both astronomical and instrumental sources of random and systematic noise. In particular, we include the effect of stray-light from every luminous source outside the field of view (FOV) of the camera: the stars, the planets and, for the first time, the light contamination from the Moon and the Earth fully modeled as extended sources. We also include the effects within the FOV of the zodiacal light, the stars provided by GAIA, the galaxy extinction provided by CADE, the cosmological background provided by the Illustris Project, and Milky Way-size galaxy models provided by GARROTXA. The effect of the rotation of the camera on its orbit around the Earth was also included. As the result of these simulations, we show how the ARRAKIHS space mission will be able to observe faint satellites and stellar streams around nearby galaxies up to 25 Mpc, with a similar detection limit to that of the PAndAS survey of the M31 halo. These observations will provide the key dataset to test the galaxy formation physics and nature of dark matter with cosmological simulations.