14,308 research outputs found
Hydrodynamic Simulations of Galaxy Formation. I. Dissipation and the Maximum Mass of Galaxies
We describe an accurate, one-dimensional, spherically symmetric, Lagrangian
hydrodynamics/gravity code, designed to study the effects of radiative cooling
and photo-ionization on the formation of protogalaxies. The code can treat an
arbitrary number of fluid shells (representing baryons) and collisionless
shells (representing cold dark matter). As a test of the code, we reproduce
analytic solutions for the pulsation behavior of a polytrope and for the
self-similar collapse of a spherically symmetric, cosmological perturbation. In
this paper, we concentrate on the effects of radiative cooling, examining the
ability of collapsing perturbations to cool within the age of the universe. In
contrast to some studies based on order-of- magnitude estimates, we find that
cooling arguments alone cannot explain the sharp upper cutoff observed in the
galaxy luminosity function.Comment: 33 pages, uuencoded compressed postscript with figures, Ap.J. (in
press), corrections to axes in Fig
CO on Ru(001): Formation and dissolution of islands of CO at low coverages
The present paper deals with the benefits and difficulties of using ion scattering spectroscopy as a spectrometric technique
Adiabatic Modes in Cosmology
We show that the field equations for cosmological perturbations in Newtonian
gauge always have an adiabatic solution, for which a quantity is
non-zero and constant in all eras in the limit of large wavelength, so that it
can be used to connect observed cosmological fluctuations in this mode with
those at very early times. There is also a second adiabatic mode, for which
vanishes for large wavelength, and in general there may be
non-adiabatic modes as well. These conclusions apply in all eras and whatever
the constituents of the universe, under only a mild technical assumption about
the wavelength dependence of the field equations for large wave length. In the
absence of anisotropic inertia, the perturbations in the adiabatic modes are
given for large wavelength by universal formulas in terms of the
Robertson--Walker scale factor. We discuss an apparent discrepancy between
these results and what appears to be a conservation law in all modes found for
large wavelength in synchronous gauge: it turns out that, although equivalent,
synchronous and Newtonian gauges suggest inequivalent assumptions about the
behavior of the perturbations for large wavelength.Comment: 24 pages, Latex, no special macro
A Test of the Adhesion Approximation for Gravitational Clustering
We quantitatively compare a particle implementation of the adhesion
approximation to fully non--linear, numerical nbody simulations. Our primary
tool, cross--correlation of nbody simulations with the adhesion approximation,
indicates good agreement, better than that found by the same test performed
with the Zel'dovich approximation (hereafter ZA). However, the
cross--correlation is not as good as that of the truncated Zel'dovich
approximation (TZA), obtained by applying the Zel'dovich approximation after
smoothing the initial density field with a Gaussian filter. We confirm that the
adhesion approximation produces an excessively filamentary distribution.
Relative to the nbody results, we also find that: (a) the power spectrum
obtained from the adhesion approximation is more accurate than that from ZA or
TZA, (b) the error in the phase angle of Fourier components is worse than that
from TZA, and (c) the mass distribution function is more accurate than that
from ZA or TZA. It appears that adhesion performs well statistically, but that
TZA is more accurate dynamically, in the sense of moving mass to the right
place.
Subject Heading: Galaxies, formation, clustering--large--scale structure of
the UniverseComment: TeX, 7 pages excluding figures (contact
[email protected]). submitted to Ap
On the origin of cold dark matter halo density profiles
N-body simulations predict that CDM halo-assembly occurs in two phases: 1) a
fast accretion phase with a rapidly deepening potential well; and 2) a slow
accretion phase characterised by a gentle addition of mass to the outer halo
with little change in the inner potential well. We demonstrate, using
one-dimensional simulations, that this two-phase accretion leads to CDM halos
of the NFW form and provides physical insight into the properties of the mass
accretion history that influence the final profile. Assuming that the
velocities of CDM particles are effectively isotropised by fluctuations in the
gravitational potential during the fast accretion phase, we show that
gravitational collapse in this phase leads to an inner profile rho(r) ~ r^{-1}.
Slow accretion onto an established potential well leads to an outer profile
with rho(r) ~ r^{-3}. The concentration of a halo is determined by the fraction
of mass that is accreted during the fast accretion phase. Using an ensemble of
realistic mass accretion histories, we show that the model predictions of the
dependence of halo concentration on halo formation time, and hence the
dependence of halo concentration on halo mass, and the distribution of halo
concentrations all match those found in cosmological N-body simulations. Using
a simple analytic model that captures much of the important physics we show
that the inner r^{-1} profile of CDM halos is a natural result of hierarchical
mass assembly with a initial phase of rapid accretion.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, references added, 11 pages, 8
figure
Constraining the Metallicity of the Low Density Lyman-alpha Forest Using OVI Absorption
We search for OVI absorption in a Keck HIRES spectrum of the z=3.62 quasar
Q1422+231. Comparison of CIV measurements to cosmological simulations shows
that \lya forest absorbers with N_HI > 10^{14.5} have [C/H]~=-2.5, for the UV
background spectrum of Haardt & Madau (HM). Lower column density absorption
arises in lower density gas, where OVI is the most sensitive metal tracer.
Since OVI lines lie at wavelengths contaminated by Lyman series absorption, we
interpret our Q1422 results by comparing to artificial spectra drawn from an
SPH simulation of a Lambda-dominated CDM model. A search for deep, narrow
features in Q1422 yields only a few candidate OVI lines, statistically
consistent with the number in artificial spectra with no metals; spectra
generated with the HM background and [O/H] >= -2.5 predict too many narrow
lines. However, applying the optical depth ratio technique of Songaila (1998),
we DO find significant OVI associated with CIV systems; matching Q1422 requires
[O/C]~=+0.5, implying [O/H]~=-2.0. Taken together these results imply that (a)
the metallicity in the low density IGM is at least a factor of three below that
in the overdense regions where CIV absorption is detectable, and (b) oxygen is
overabundant in these regions, consistent with the enrichment pattern of old
halo stars. If the UV background is heavily truncated above 4 Ry, an
implausibly high oxygen overabundance ([O/C]>+2) is required by the data; thus
a majority of the volume of the universe must have undergone helium
reionization by z=3.(Abridged)Comment: Submitted to ApJ, 48 pp including 14 ps figures, uses aaspp4.st
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