263 research outputs found
How do galaxies acquire their mass?
We introduce a toy model that describes (in a single equation) the mass in
stars as a function of halo mass and redshift. Our model includes the
suppression of gas accretion from gravitational shock heating and AGN jets
mainly for M_halo > M_shock ~ 10^12 M_Sun and from a too hot IGM onto haloes
with v_circ < 40 km/s, as well as stellar feedback that drives gas out of
haloes mainly with v_circ < 120 km/s. We run our model on the merger trees of
the haloes and subhaloes of a high-resolution dark matter cosmological
simulation. The galaxy mass is taken as the maximum between the mass given by
the model and the sum of the masses of its progenitors (reduced by tidal
stripping). Designed to reproduce the present-day stellar mass function of
galaxies, our model matches fairly well the evolution of the cosmic stellar
density. It leads to the same z=0 relation between central galaxy stellar and
halo mass as the one found by abundance matching and also as that previously
measured at high mass on SDSS centrals. Our model also predicts a bimodal
distribution (centrals and satellites) of stellar masses for given halo mass,
in good agreement with SDSS observations. The relative importance of mergers
depends much more on stellar than halo mass. Galaxies with m_stars > 10^11
M_Sun/h acquire most of their mass through mergers (mostly major and gas-poor),
as expected from our model's shutdown of gas accretion at high M_halo. However,
mergers are rare for m_stars < 10^11 M_Sun/h (greater than our mass
resolution), a consequence of the curvature of the stellar vs. halo mass
relation. So gas accretion must be the dominant growth mechanism for
intermediate and low mass galaxies, e.g. dwarf ellipticals in clusters, except
that gas-rich galaxy mergers account for the bulk of the growth of ellipticals
with m_stars ~ 10^10.5 M_Sun/h, which we predict must be the typical mass of
ULIRGs.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, A&A in press (major re-write and updated
figures from version 1
The evolution of substructure II: linking dynamics to environment
We present results from a series of high-resolution N-body simulations that
focus on the formation and evolution of eight dark matter halos, each of order
a million particles within the virial radius. We follow the time evolution of
hundreds of satellite galaxies with unprecedented time resolution, relating
their physical properties to the differing halo environmental conditions. The
self-consistent cosmological framework in which our analysis was undertaken
allows us to explore satellite disruption within live host potentials, a
natural complement to earlier work conducted within static potentials. Our host
halos were chosen to sample a variety of formation histories, ages, and
triaxialities; despite their obvious differences, we find striking similarities
within the associated substructure populations. Namely, all satellite orbits
follow nearly the same eccentricity distribution with a correlation between
eccentricity and pericentre. We also find that the destruction rate of the
substructure population is nearly independent of the mass, age, and triaxiality
of the host halo. There are, however, subtle differences in the velocity
anisotropy of the satellite distribution. We find that the local velocity bias
at all radii is greater than unity for all halos and this increases as we move
closer to the halo centre, where it varies from 1.1 to 1.4. For the global
velocity bias we find a small but slightly positive bias, although when we
restrict the global velocity bias calculation to satellites that have had at
least one orbit, the bias is essentially removed.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, MNRAS in pres
Top-Down Fragmentation of a Warm Dark Matter Filament
We present the first high-resolution n-body simulations of the fragmentation
of dark matter filaments. Such fragmentation occurs in top-down scenarios of
structure formation, when the dark matter is warm instead of cold. In a
previous paper (Knebe et al. 2002, hereafter Paper I), we showed that WDM
differs from the standard Cold Dark Matter (CDM) mainly in the formation
history and large-scale distribution of low-mass haloes, which form later and
tend to be more clustered in WDM than in CDM universes, tracing more closely
the filamentary structures of the cosmic web. Therefore, we focus our
computational effort in this paper on one particular filament extracted from a
WDM cosmological simulation and compare in detail its evolution to that of the
same CDM filament. We find that the mass distribution of the halos forming via
fragmentation within the filament is broadly peaked around a Jeans mass of a
few 10^9 Msun, corresponding to a gravitational instability of smooth regions
with an overdensity contrast around 10 at these redshifts. Our results confirm
that WDM filaments fragment and form gravitationally bound haloes in a top-down
fashion, whereas CDM filaments are built bottom-up, thus demonstrating the
impact of the nature of the dark matter on dwarf galaxy properties.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, replaced with MNRAS accepted version (minor
revisions
The halo mass function through the cosmic ages
In this paper we investigate how the halo mass function evolves with
redshift, based on a suite of very large (with N_p = 3072^3 - 6000^3 particles)
cosmological N-body simulations. Our halo catalogue data spans a redshift range
of z = 0-30, allowing us to probe the mass function from the dark ages to the
present. We utilise both the Friends-of-Friends (FOF) and Spherical Overdensity
(SO) halofinding methods to directly compare the mass function derived using
these commonly used halo definitions. The mass function from SO haloes exhibits
a clear evolution with redshift, especially during the recent era of dark
energy dominance (z < 1). We provide a redshift-parameterised fit for the SO
mass function valid for the entire redshift range to within ~20% as well as a
scheme to calculate the mass function for haloes with arbitrary overdensities.
The FOF mass function displays a weaker evolution with redshift. We provide a
`universal' fit for the FOF mass function, fitted to data across the entire
redshift range simultaneously, and observe redshift evolution in our data
versus this fit. The relative evolution of the mass functions derived via the
two methods is compared and we find that the mass functions most closely match
at z=0. The disparity at z=0 between the FOF and SO mass functions resides in
their high mass tails where the collapsed fraction of mass in SO haloes is ~80%
of that in FOF haloes. This difference grows with redshift so that, by z>20,
the SO algorithm finds a ~50-80% lower collapsed fraction in high mass haloes
than does the FOF algorithm, due in part to the significant over-linking
effects known to affect the FOF method.Comment: v4, 16 pages, 16 colour figures. Changed to match MNRAS print
version. NOTE: v1 of this paper has a typo in the fitting function. Please
ensure you use the latest versio
Hydrodynamic Approach to the Evolution of Cosmic Structures II: Study of N-body Simulations at z=0
We present a series of cosmological N-body simulations which make use of the
hydrodynamic approach to the evolution of structures (Dominguez 2000). This
approach addresses explicitly the existence of a finite spatial resolution and
the dynamical effect of subresolution degrees of freedom. We adapt this method
to cosmological simulations of the standard LCDM structure formation scenario
and study the effects induced at redshift z=0 by this novel approach on the
large-scale clustering patterns as well as (individual) dark matter halos.
Comparing these simulations to usual N-body simulations, we find that (i) the
new (hydrodynamic) model entails a proliferation of low--mass halos, and (ii)
dark matter halos have a higher degree of rotational support. These results
agree with the theoretical expectation about the qualitative behaviour of the
"correction terms" introduced by the hydrodynamic approach: these terms act as
a drain of inflow kinetic energy and a source of vorticity by the small-scale
tidal torques and shear stresses.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figs, MNRAS in press, article with full resolution
figures avaialble at http://www.aip.de/People/AKnebe/page2/page2.htm
High resolution simulations of the reionization of an isolated Milky Way - M31 galaxy pair
We present the results of a set of numerical simulations aimed at studying
reionization at galactic scale. We use a high resolution simulation of the
formation of the Milky Way-M31 system to simulate the reionization of the local
group. The reionization calculation was performed with the post-processing
radiative transfer code ATON and the underlying cosmological simulation was
performed as part of the CLUES project. We vary the source models to bracket
the range of source properties used in the literature. We investigate the
structure and propagation of the galatic ionization fronts by a visual
examination of our reionization maps. Within the progenitors we find that
reionization is patchy, and proceeds locally inside out. The process becomes
patchier with decreasing source photon output. It is generally dominated by one
major HII region and 1-4 additional isolated smaller bubbles, which eventually
overlap. Higher emissivity results in faster and earlier local reionization. In
all models, the reionization of the Milky Way and M31 are similar in duration,
i.e. between 203 Myr and 22 Myr depending on the source model, placing their
zreion between 8.4 and 13.7. In all models except the most extreme, the MW and
M31 progenitors reionize internally, ignoring each other, despite being
relatively close to each other even during the epoch of reionization. Only in
the case of strong supernova feedback suppressing star formation in haloes less
massive than 10^9 M_sun, and using our highest emissivity, we find that the MW
is reionized by M31.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 14 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl
Vast planes of satellites in a high resolution simulation of the Local Group: comparison to Andromeda
We search for vast planes of satellites (VPoS) in a high resolution
simulation of the Local Group performed by the CLUES project, which improves
significantly the resolution of former similar studies. We use a simple method
for detecting planar configurations of satellites, and validate it on the known
plane of M31. We implement a range of prescriptions for modelling the satellite
populations, roughly reproducing the variety of recipes used in the literature,
and investigate the occurence and properties of planar structures in these
populations. The structure of the simulated satellite systems is strongly
non-random and contains planes of satellites, predominantly co-rotating, with,
in some cases, sizes comparable to the plane observed in M31 by Ibata et al..
However the latter is slightly richer in satellites, slightly thinner and has
stronger co-rotation, which makes it stand out as overall more exceptional than
the simulated planes, when compared to a random population. Although the
simulated planes we find are generally dominated by one real structure, forming
its backbone, they are also partly fortuitous and are thus not kinematically
coherent structures as a whole. Provided that the simulated and observed planes
of satellites are indeed of the same nature, our results suggest that the VPoS
of M31 is not a coherent disc and that one third to one half of its satellites
must have large proper motions perpendicular to the plane
Cosmology on a Mesh
An adaptive multi grid approach to simulating the formation of structure from
collisionless dark matter is described. MLAPM (Multi-Level Adaptive Particle
Mesh) is one of the most efficient serial codes available on the cosmological
'market' today. As part of Swinburne University's role in the development of
the Square Kilometer Array, we are implementing hydrodynamics, feedback, and
radiative transfer within the MLAPM adaptive mesh, in order to simulate
baryonic processes relevant to the interstellar and intergalactic media at high
redshift. We will outline our progress to date in applying the existing MLAPM
to a study of the decay of satellite galaxies within massive host potentials.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of "The IGM/Galaxy
Connection - The Distribution of Baryons at z=0", ed. M. Putman & J.
Rosenber
Sussing merger trees: the Merger Trees Comparison Project
Merger trees follow the growth and merger of dark-matter haloes over cosmic history. As well as giving important insights into the growth of cosmic structure in their own right, they provide an essential backbone to semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. This paper is the first in a series to arise from the Sussing Merger Trees Workshop in which 10 different tree-building algorithms were applied to the same set of halo catalogues and their results compared. Although many of these codes were similar in nature, all algorithms produced distinct results. Our main conclusions are that a useful merger-tree code should possess the following features: (i) the use of particle IDs to match haloes between snapshots; (ii) the ability to skip at least one, and preferably more, snapshots in order to recover subhaloes that are temporarily lost during merging; (iii) the ability to cope with (and ideally smooth out) large, temporary fluctuations in halo mass. Finally, to enable different groups to communicate effectively, we defined a common terminology that we used when discussing merger trees and we encourage others to adopt the same language. We also specified a minimal output format to record the results
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