Effects of baryons on the dark matter distribution in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations

Simulations including solely dark matter performed over the last three decades have delivered an accurate and robust description of the cosmic web and dark matter structures. With the advent of more precise cosmological probes, planned and ongoing, and dark matter detection experiments, this numerical modelling has to be improved to incorporate the complex non-linear and energetic processes taking place during galaxy formation. We use the ``Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environment'' (EAGLE) suite of cosmological simulations to investigate the effects of baryons and astrophysical processes on the underlying dark matter distribution. Many effects are expected and we investigate (i): the modification of the profile of halos from the Navarro-Frenk-White profile shape found in collisionless simulations, including the changes in the dark matter profiles themselves, (ii) the changes of the inner density profiles of rich clusters, where observations have suggested a deviation from the standard cold dark matter paradigm, (iii) the offset created by astrophysical process between the centre of galaxies and the centre of the dark matter halo in which they reside and, (iv) the changes in the shape of the dark matter profile due to baryons in the centre of Milky Way halos and the impact these changes have on the morphology of the annihilation signal that could be observed as an indirect proof of the existence of dark matter. In all cases we find that the baryons play a significant role and change the results found in collisionless simulations dramatically. This highlights the need for more simulations like EAGLE to better understand and analyse future cosmology surveys. We also conduct a thorough study of the hydrodynamics solver parameters used in these simulations, assess their impact on the simulated galaxy population and show how robust some of the EAGLE results are against such variations

On the anisotropic distribution of clusters in the local Universe

In his 2021 lecture to the Canadian Association of Physicists Congress, P.J.E. Peebles pointed out that the brightest extra-galactic radio sources tend to be aligned with the plane of the de Vaucouleur Local Supercluster up to redshifts of $z=0.02$ ($d_{\rm MW}\approx 85~\rm{Mpc}$). He then asked whether such an alignment of clusters is anomalous in the standard $\Lambda$CDM framework. In this letter, we employ an alternative, absolute orientation agnostic, measure of the anisotropy based on the inertia tensor axis ratio of these brightest sources and use a large cosmological simulation from the FLAMINGO suite to measure how common such an alignment of structures is. We find that only 3.5% of randomly selected regions display an anisotropy of their clusters more extreme than the one found in the local Universe's radio data. This sets the region around the Milky Way as a $1.85\sigma$ outlier. Varying the selection parameters of the objects in the catalogue, we find that the clusters in the local Universe are never more than $2\sigma$ away from the simulations' prediction for the same selection. We thus conclude that the reported anisotropy, whilst note-worthy, is not in tension with the $\Lambda$CDM paradigm.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRA

Energy equipartition between stellar and dark matter particles in cosmological simulations results in spurious growth of galaxy sizes

The impact of 2-body scattering on the innermost density profiles of dark matter haloes is well established. We use a suite of cosmological simulations and idealized numerical experiments to show that 2-body scattering is exacerbated in situations where there are two species of unequal mass. This is a consequence of mass segregation and reflects a flow of kinetic energy from the more to less massive particles. This has important implications for the interpretation of galaxy sizes in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, which nearly always model stars with less massive particles than are used for the dark matter. We compare idealized models as well as simulations from the eagle project that differ only in the mass resolution of the dark matter component, but keep subgrid physics, baryonic mass resolution, and gravitational force softening fixed. If the dark matter particle mass exceeds the mass of stellar particles, then galaxy sizes – quantified by their projected half-mass radii, R50 – increase systematically with time until R50 exceeds a small fraction of the redshift-dependent mean interparticle separation, l (⁠ R 50 ≳0.05×l R50≳0.05×l ⁠). Our conclusions should also apply to simulations that adopt different hydrodynamic solvers, subgrid physics, or adaptive softening, but in that case may need quantitative revision. Any simulation employing a stellar-to-dark matter particle mass ratio greater than unity will escalate spurious energy transfer from dark matter to baryons on small scales

Resolution criteria to avoid artificial clumping in Lagrangian hydrodynamic simulations with a multi-phase interstellar medium

Large-scale cosmological galaxy formation simulations typically prevent gas in the interstellar medium (ISM) from cooling below $\approx 10^4$ K. This has been motivated by the inability to resolve the Jeans mass in molecular gas (>>$10^5\,\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$) which would result in undesired artificial clumping. We show that the classical Jeans criteria derived for Newtonian gravity are not applicable in the simulated ISM if the spacing of resolution elements representing the dense ISM is below the gravitational force softening length and gravity is therefore softened and not Newtonian. We re-derive the Jeans criteria for softened gravity in Lagrangian codes and use them to analyse gravitational instabilities at and below the hydrodynamical resolution limit for simulations with adaptive and constant gravitational softening lengths. In addition, we define criteria for which a numerical runaway collapse of dense gas clumps can occur caused by over-smoothing of the hydrodynamical properties relative to the gravitational force resolution. This effect is illustrated using simulations of isolated disk galaxies with the smoothed particle hydrodynamics code Swift. We also demonstrate how to avoid the formation of artificial clumps in gas and stars by adjusting the gravitational and hydrodynamical force resolutions.Comment: 24 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, smaller updates to match published versio