On the shape of dark matter halos from MultiDark Planck simulations

The halo shape plays a central role in determining important observational properties of the haloes such as mass, concentration and lensing cross-sections. The triaxiality of lensing galaxy clusters has a substantial impact on the distribution of the largest Einstein radii, while weak lensing techniques are sensitive to the intrinsic halo ellipticity. In this work, we provide scaling relations for the shapes of dark matter haloes as a function of mass (peak height) and redshift over more than four orders of magnitude in halo masses, namely from $10^{11.5}$ to $10^{15.8}~h^{-1}~$M$_\odot$. We have analysed four dark matter only simulations from the MultiDark cosmological simulation suite with more than 56 billion particles within boxes of 4.0, 2.5, 1.0 and 0.4 $h^{-1}$Gpc size assuming \textit{Planck} cosmology. The dark matter haloes have been identified in the simulations using the {\sc rockstar} halo finder, which also determines the axis ratios in terms of the diagonalization of the inertia tensor. In order to infer the shape for a hypothetical halo of a given mass at a given redshift, we provide fitting functions to the minor-to-major and intermediate-to-major axis ratios as a function of the peak height.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS (14 pages, 13 figures). The ROCKSTAR outputs used in this paper are available at https://www.cosmosim.org/cms/simulations/data

Large scale environmental bias of the QSO line of sight proximity effect

We analyse the proximity zone of the intergalactic matter around high-redshift quasars in a cosmological environment. In a box of 64 h-1 Mpc base length we employ dark matter only simulations. For estimating the hydrogen temperature and density distribution we use the effective equation of state. Hydrogen is assumed to be in photoionisation equilibrium with a model background flux which is fit to recent observations of the mean optical depth and transmission flux statistics. At redshifts z = 3, 4, and 4.8, we select model quasar positions at the centre of the 20 most massive halos and 100 less massive halos identified in the simulation. From each assumed quasar position we cast 100 random lines of sight for two box length including the changes in the ionisation fractions by the QSO flux field and derive mock Ly{\alpha} spectra. The proximity effect describes the dependence of the mean normalised optical depth {\xi} = {\tau}eff, QSO/{\tau}eff, Ly{\alpha} as a function of the ratio of the ionisation rate by the QSO and the background field, {\omega} = {\Gamma}QSO/{\Gamma}UVB, i.e. the profile {\xi} = (1 + {\omega}/a)-0.5, where a strength parameter a is introduced. The strength parameter measures the deviation from the theoretical background model and is used to quantify any influence of the environmental density field. We reproduce an unbiased measurement of the proximity effect which is not affected by the host halo mass. The scatter between different lines of sight and different quasar host positions increases with decreasing redshift. Around the host halos, we find only a slight average overdensity in the proximity zone at comoving radii of 1 < rc < 10h-1 Mpc. However, a clear power-law correlation of the strength parameter with the average overdensity in rc is found, showing an overestimation of the ionising background in overdense regions and an underestimation in underdense regions.Comment: Accepted by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 15 pages, 12 figure

Bullet Clusters in the MareNostrum Universe

We estimate the expected distribution of displacements between the dark matter and gas cores in simulated clusters. We use the MareNostrum Universe, one of the largest non radiative, SPH Lambda CDM cosmological simulations. We find that projected 2-D displacements between dark matter and gas, equal or larger than the observed in the Bullet Cluster, are expected in 1% to 2% of the clusters with masses larger than 10^{14} Msun. The 2-D displacement distribution is roughly the same between redshifts 0<z<0.5 when multiplied by a factor of (1+z)^{-1/2}. We conclude that the separations between dark matter and gas as observed in the bullet cluster can be easily found in a Lambda CDM universe. Furthermore we find that the displacement distribution is not very sensitive to the normalization of the power spectrum. Upcoming surveys could extend the measurements of these displacements between dark matter and gas into large samples of hundreds of clusters, providing a potential test for Lambda CDM.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

Ram pressure statistics for bent tail radio galaxies

In this paper we use the MareNostrum Universe Simulation, a large scale, hydrodynamic, non-radiative simulation in combination with a simple abundance matching approach to determine the ram pressure statistics for bent radio sources (BRSs). The abundance matching approach allows us to determine the locations of all galaxies with stellar masses $> 10^{11} MSol$ in the simulation volume. Assuming ram pressure exceeding a critical value causes bent morphology, we compute the ratio of all galaxies exceeding the ram pressure limit (RPEX galaxies) relative to all galaxies in our sample. According to our model 50% of the RPEX galaxies at $z = 0$ are found in clusters with masses larger than $10^{14.5}MSol$ the other half resides in lower mass clusters. Therefore, the appearance of bent tail morphology alone does not put tight constraints on the host cluster mass. In low mass clusters, $M < 10^{14}MSol$, RPEX galaxies are confined to the central 500 kpc whereas in clusters of $> 10^{15}Msol$ they can be found at distances up to 1.5Mpc. Only clusters with masses $> 10^{15}MSol$ are likely to host more than one BRS. Both criteria may prove useful in the search for distant, high mass clusters.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, Submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societ

A kinematic classification of the cosmic web

A new approach for the classification of the cosmic web is presented. In extension of the previous work of Hahn et al. (2007) and Forero-Romero et al. (2009) the new algorithm is based on the analysis of the velocity shear tensor rather than the gravitational tidal tensor. The procedure consists of the construction of the the shear tensor at each (grid) point in space and the evaluation of its three eigenvectors. A given point is classified to be either a void, sheet, filament or a knot according to the number of eigenvalues above a certain threshold, 0, 1, 2, or 3 respectively. The threshold is treated as a free parameter that defines the web. The algorithm has been applied to a dark matter only, high resolution simulation of a box of side-length 64$h^{-1}$Mpc and N = $1024^3$ particles with the framework of the WMAP5/LCDM model. The resulting velocity based cosmic web resolves structures down to <0.1$h^{-1}$Mpc scales, as opposed to the ~1$h^{-1}$Mpc scale of the tidal based web. The under-dense regions are made of extended voids bisected by planar sheets, whose density is also below the mean. The over-dense regions are vastly dominated by the linear filaments and knots. The resolution achieved by the velocity based cosmic web provides a platform for studying the formation of halos and galaxies within the framework of the cosmic web.Comment: 8 pages, 4 Figures, MNRAS Accepted 2012 June 19. Received 2012 May 10; in original form 2011 August 2

Halo abundance matching: Accuracy and conditions for numerical convergence

This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2015 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reservedAccurate predictions of the abundance and clustering of dark matter haloes play a key role in testing the standard cosmological model. Here, we investigate the accuracy of one of the leading methods of connecting the simulated dark matter haloes with observed galaxies-the halo abundance matching (HAM) technique.We show how to choose the optimal values of the mass and force resolution in large volume N-body simulations so that they provide accurate estimates for correlation functions and circular velocities for haloes and their subhaloes-crucial ingredients of the HAM method. At the 10 per cent accuracy, results converge for-50 particles for haloes and-150 particles for progenitors of subhaloes. In order to achieve this level of accuracy a number of conditions should be satisfied. The force resolution for the smallest resolved (sub)haloes should be in the range (0.1-0.3)rs, where rs is the scale radius of (sub)haloes. The number of particles for progenitors of subhaloes should be-150. We also demonstrate that the two-body scattering plays a minor role for the accuracy of N-body simulations thanks to the relatively small number of crossing-times of dark matter in haloes, and the limited force resolution of cosmological simulationsAK acknowledges the support of NSF and NASA grants to NMSU. GY acknowledges support from the Spanish MINECO under research grants AYA2012-31101, FPA2012-34694 and Consolider Ingenio SyeC CSD2007-0050 and from Comunidad de Madrid under ASTRO- MADRID project (S2009/ESP-1496