14 research outputs found
The orientation of galaxy dark matter haloes around cosmic voids
Using the Millennium N-body Simulation we explore how the shape and angular momentum of galaxy dark matter haloes surrounding the largest cosmological voids are oriented. We find that the major and intermediate axes of the haloes tend to lie parallel to the surface of the voids, whereas the minor axis points preferentially in the radial direction. We have quantified the strength of these alignments at different radial distances from the void centres. The effect of these orientations is still detected at distances as large as 2.2 Rvoid from the void centre. Taking a subsample of haloes expected to contain disc-dominated galaxies at their centres we detect, at the 99.9 per cent confidence level, a signal that the angular momentum of those haloes tends to lie parallel to the surface of the voids. Contrary to the alignments of the inertia axes, this signal is only detected in shells at the void surface (1 < R < 1.07 Rvoid) and disappears at larger distances. This signal, together with the similar alignment observed using real spiral galaxies, strongly supports the prediction of the Tidal Torque theory that both dark matter haloes and baryonic matter have acquired, conjointly, their angular momentum before the moment of turnaround
Hydrodynamic simulations with the Godunov SPH
We present results based on an implementation of the Godunov Smoothed
Particle Hydrodynamics (GSPH), originally developed by Inutsuka (2002), in the
GADGET-3 hydrodynamic code. We first review the derivation of the GSPH
discretization of the equations of moment and energy conservation, starting
from the convolution of these equations with the interpolating kernel. The two
most important aspects of the numerical implementation of these equations are
(a) the appearance of fluid velocity and pressure obtained from the solution of
the Riemann problem between each pair of particles, and (b the absence of an
artificial viscosity term. We carry out three different controlled
hydrodynamical three-dimensional tests, namely the Sod shock tube, the
development of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities in a shear flow test, and the
"blob" test describing the evolution of a cold cloud moving against a hot wind.
The results of our tests confirm and extend in a number of aspects those
recently obtained by Cha (2010): (i) GSPH provides a much improved description
of contact discontinuities, with respect to SPH, thus avoiding the appearance
of spurious pressure forces; (ii) GSPH is able to follow the development of
gas-dynamical instabilities, such as the Kevin--Helmholtz and the
Rayleigh-Taylor ones; (iii) as a result, GSPH describes the development of curl
structures in the shear-flow test and the dissolution of the cold cloud in the
"blob" test.
We also discuss in detail the effect on the performances of GSPH of changing
different aspects of its implementation. The results of our tests demonstrate
that GSPH is in fact a highly promising hydrodynamic scheme, also to be coupled
to an N-body solver, for astrophysical and cosmological applications.
[abridged]Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures, MNRAS accepted, high resolution version can be
obtained at
http://adlibitum.oats.inaf.it/borgani/html/papers/gsph_hydrosim.pd
Massive and refined: a sample of large galaxy clusters simulated at high resolution. I:Thermal gas and shock waves properties
We present a sample of 20 massive galaxy clusters with total virial masses in
the range of 6 10^14 M_sol<M(vir)< 2 10^15M_sol, re-simulated with a customized
version of the 1.5. ENZO code employing Adaptive Mesh Refinement. This
technique allowed us to obtain unprecedented high spatial resolution (25kpc/h)
up to the distance of 3 virial radii from the clusters center, and makes it
possible to focus with the same level of detail on the physical properties of
the innermost and of the outermost cluster regions, providing new clues on the
role of shock waves and turbulent motions in the ICM, across a wide range of
scales.
In this paper, a first exploratory study of this data set is presented. We
report on the thermal properties of galaxy clusters at z=0. Integrated and
morphological properties of gas density, gas temperature, gas entropy and
baryon fraction distributions are discussed, and compared with existing
outcomes both from the observational and from the numerical literature.
Our cluster sample shows an overall good consistency with the results
obtained adopting other numerical techniques (e.g. Smoothed Particles
Hydrodynamics), yet it provides a more accurate representation of the accretion
patterns far outside the cluster cores. We also reconstruct the properties of
shock waves within the sample by means of a velocity-based approach, and we
study Mach numbers and energy distributions for the various dynamical states in
clusters, giving estimates for the injection of Cosmic Rays particles at
shocks. The present sample is rather unique in the panorama of cosmological
simulations of massive galaxy clusters, due to its dynamical range, statistics
of objects and number of time outputs. For this reason, we deploy a public
repository of the available data, accessible via web portal at
http://data.cineca.it.Comment: 26 pages, 20 figures, New Astronomy accepted. Reference list updated.
Higher quality versions of the paper can be found at:
http://www.ira.inaf.it/~vazza/papers A public archive of galaxy clusters data
is accessible at http://data.cineca.it
Hydrodynamic simulations with the Godunov smoothed particle hydrodynamics
We present results based on an implementation of the Godunov smoothed particle hydrodynamics (GSPH), originally developed by Inutsuka, in the gadget-3 hydrodynamic code. We first review the derivation of the GSPH discretization of the equations of moment and energy conservation, starting from the convolution of these equations with the interpolating kernel. The two most important aspects of the numerical implementation of these equations are (a) the appearance of fluid velocity and pressure obtained from the solution of the Riemann problem between each pair of particles, and (b) the absence of an artificial viscosity term. We carry out three different controlled hydrodynamical three-dimensional tests, namely the Sod shock tube, the development of Kelvin\u2013Helmholtz instabilities in a shear-flow test and the \u2018blob\u2019 test describing the evolution of a cold cloud moving against a hot wind.
The results of our tests confirm and extend in a number of aspects those recently obtained by Cha, Inutsuka & Nayakshin: (i) GSPH provides a much improved description of contact discontinuities, with respect to smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), thus avoiding the appearance of spurious pressure forces; (ii) GSPH is able to follow the development of gas-dynamical instabilities, such as the Kevin\u2013Helmholtz and the Rayleigh\u2013Taylor ones; (iii) as a result, GSPH describes the development of curl structures in the shear-flow test and the dissolution of the cold cloud in the \u2018blob\u2019 test.
Besides comparing the results of GSPH with those from standard SPH implementations, we also discuss in detail the effect on the performances of GSPH of changing different aspects of its implementation: choice of the number of neighbours, accuracy of the interpolation procedure to locate the interface between two fluid elements (particles) for the solution of the Riemann problem, order of the reconstruction for the assignment of variables at the interface, choice of the limiter to prevent oscillations of interpolated quantities in the solution of the Riemann Problem. The results of our tests demonstrate that GSPH is in fact a highly promising hydrodynamic scheme, also to be coupled to an N-body solver, for astrophysical and cosmological applications
Massive and refined: II. the statistical properties of turbulent motions in massive galaxy clusters with high spatial resolution
We study the properties of chaotic motions in the intra cluster medium using a set of 20 galaxy clusters simulated with large dynamical range, using the adaptive mesh refinement code ENZO. The adopted setup allows us to study the spectral and spatial properties of turbulent motions in galaxy clusters with unprecedented detail, achieving an maximum available Reynolds number of the order of Re \ue2\u88\ubc 500-1000 for the largest eddies. We investigated the correlations between the energy of these motions in the intra cluster medium and the dynamical state of the host systems. We find that the statistical properties of turbulent motions and their evolution with time imply that major merger events are responsible for the injection of the bulk of turbulent kinetic energy into the cluster. Turbulence is found to account for \ue2\u88\ubc20-30 per cent of the thermal energy in merging clusters, and \ue2\u88\ubc5 per cent in relaxed clusters. We compare the energies of turbulence and motions in our simulated clusters with upper-limits for real nearby clusters derived from XMM-Newton data. When turbulent motions are compared on the same spatial scales, the data from simulations are well within the range presently allowed by observations. Finally, we comment on the possibility that turbulence may accelerate relativistic particles leading to the formation of giant radio halos in turbulent (merging) clusters. On the basis of our simulations, we confirm the conclusions of previous semi-analytical studies that the fraction of turbulent clusters appears to be consistent with that of clusters hosting radio halos. \uc2\ua9 2011 ESO
A test suite for quantitative comparison of hydrodynamic codes in astrophysics
We test four commonly used astrophysical simulation codes; Enzo, Flash,
Gadget and Hydra, using a suite of numerical problems with analytic initial and
final states. Situations similar to the conditions of these tests, a Sod shock,
a Sedov blast and both a static and translating King sphere occur commonly in
astrophysics, where the accurate treatment of shocks, sound waves, supernovae
explosions and collapsed haloes is a key condition for obtaining reliable
validated simulations. We demonstrate that comparable results can be obtained
for Lagrangian and Eulerian codes by requiring that approximately one particle
exists per grid cell in the region of interest. We conclude that adaptive
Eulerian codes, with their ability to place refinements in regions of rapidly
changing density, are well suited to problems where physical processes are
related to such changes. Lagrangian methods, on the other hand, are well suited
to problems where large density contrasts occur and the physics is related to
the local density itself rather than the local density gradient.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA