The Influence of Large-Scale Structure on Halo Shapes and Alignments

Alignments of galaxy clusters (the Binggeli effect), as well as of galaxies themselves have long been studied both observationally and theoretically. Here we test the influence of large-scales structures and tidal fields on the shapes and alignments of cluster-size and galaxy-size dark matter halos. We use a high-resolution N-body simulation of a $\Lambda$CDM universe, together with the results of Colberg et al. (2005), who identified filaments connecting pairs of clusters. We find that cluster pairs connected by a filament are strongly aligned with the cluster-cluster axis, whereas unconnected ones are not. For smaller, galaxy-size halos, there also is an alignment signal, but its strength is independent of whether the halo is part of an obvious large-scale structure. Additionally, we find no measureable dependence of galaxy halo shape on membership of a filament. We also quantify the influence of tidal fields and find that these do correlate strongly with alignments of halos. The alignments of most halos are thus caused by tidal fields, with cluster-size halos being strongly aligned through the added mechanism of infall of matter from filaments.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Direct cosmological simulations of the growth of black holes and galaxies

We investigate the coupled formation and evolution of galaxies and their embedded supermassive black holes using state-of-the-art hydrodynamic simulations of cosmological structure formation. For the first time, we self-consistently follow the dark matter dynamics, radiative gas cooling, star formation, as well as black hole growth and associated feedback processes, starting directly from initial conditions appropriate for the LambdaCDM cosmology. Our modeling of the black hole physics is based on an approach we have developed in simulations of isolated galaxy mergers. Here we examine: (i) the predicted global history of black hole mass assembly (ii) the evolution of the local black hole-host mass correlations and (iii) the conditions that allow rapid growth of the first quasars, and the properties of their hosts and descendants today. We find a total black hole mass density in good agreement with observational estimates. The black hole accretion rate density peaks at lower redshift and evolves more strongly at high redshift than the star formation rate density, but the ratio of black hole to stellar mass densities shows only a moderate evolution at low redshifts. We find strong correlations between black hole masses and properties of the stellar systems, agreeing well with the measured local M_BH-sigma and M_BH -M_* relationships, but also suggesting (dependent on the mass range) a weak evolution with redshift in the normalization and the slope. Our simulations also produce massive black holes at high redshift, due to extended periods of exponential growth in regions that collapse early and exhibit strong gas inflows. These first supermassive BH systems however are not necessarily the most massive ones today, since they are often overtaken in growth by quasars that form later. (abridged)Comment: 22 pages, 17 figures, submitted to Ap

A filament of dark matter between two clusters of galaxies

It is a firm prediction of the concordance Cold Dark Matter (CDM) cosmological model that galaxy clusters live at the intersection of large-scale structure filaments. The thread-like structure of this "cosmic web" has been traced by galaxy redshift surveys for decades. More recently the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM) residing in low redshift filaments has been observed in emission and absorption. However, a reliable direct detection of the underlying Dark Matter skeleton, which should contain more than half of all matter, remained elusive, as earlier candidates for such detections were either falsified or suffered from low signal-to-noise ratios and unphysical misalignements of dark and luminous matter. Here we report the detection of a dark matter filament connecting the two main components of the Abell 222/223 supercluster system from its weak gravitational lensing signal, both in a non-parametric mass reconstruction and in parametric model fits. This filament is coincident with an overdensity of galaxies and diffuse, soft X-ray emission and contributes mass comparable to that of an additional galaxy cluster to the total mass of the supercluster. Combined with X-ray observations, we place an upper limit of 0.09 on the hot gas fraction, the mass of X-ray emitting gas divided by the total mass, in the filament.Comment: Nature, in pres

Supermassive Black Holes and Their Environments

We make use of the first high--resolution hydrodynamic simulations of structure formation which self-consistently follows the build up of supermassive black holes introduced in Di Matteo et al. (2007) to investigate the relation between black holes (BH), host halo and large--scale environment. There are well--defined relations between halo and black hole masses and between the activities of galactic nuclei and halo masses at low redshifts. A large fraction of black holes forms anti--hierarchically, with a higher ratio of black hole to halo mass at high than at low redshifts. At $z=1$, we predict group environments (regions of enhanced local density) to contain the highest mass and most active (albeit with a large scatter) BHs while the rest of the BH population to be spread over all densities from groups to filaments and voids. Density dependencies are more pronounced at high rather than low redshift. These results are consistent with the idea that gas rich mergers are likely the main regulator of quasar activity. We find star formation to be a somewhat stronger and tighter function of local density than BH activity, indicating some difference in the triggering of the latter versus the former. There exists a large number of low--mass black holes, growing slowly predominantly through accretion, which extends all the way into the most underdense regions, i.e. in voids.Comment: 18 pages, 15 Figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

The Aspen-Amsterdam void finder comparison project

Despite a history that dates back at least a quarter of a century, studies of voids in the large-scale structure of the Universe are bedevilled by a major problem: there exist a large number of quite different void-finding algorithms, a fact that has so far got in the way of groups comparing their results without worrying about whether such a comparison in fact makes sense. Because of the recent increased interest in voids, both in very large galaxy surveys and in detailed simulations of cosmic structure formation, this situation is very unfortunate. We here present the first systematic comparison study of 13 different void finders constructed using particles, haloes, and semi-analytical model galaxies extracted from a subvolume of the Millennium simulation. This study includes many groups that have studied voids over the past decade. We show their results and discuss their differences and agreements. As it turns out, the basic results of the various methods agree very well with each other in that they all locate a major void near the centre of our volume. Voids have very underdense centres, reaching below 10 per cent of the mean cosmic density. In addition, those void finders that allow for void galaxies show that those galaxies follow similar trends. For example, the overdensity of void galaxies brighter than mB=−20 is found to be smaller than about −0.8 by all our void finding algorithm

Voids in a Λ\LambdaCDM Universe

We study the formation and evolution of voids in the dark matter distribution using various simulations of the popular $\Lambda$ Cold Dark Matter cosmogony. We identify voids by requiring them to be regions of space with a mean overdensity of -0.8 or less. Each of the simulations contains thousands of voids. The distribution of void sizes in the different simulations shows good agreement. Voids very clearly correspond to minima in the smoothed initial density field. We find a universal void mass profile of the form $\rho(<r)/\rho(r_{\rm eff}) \propto \exp[(r/r_{\rm eff})^\alpha]$ where $r_{\rm eff}$ is the effective radius of a void and $\alpha\sim 2$. The mass function of haloes in voids is steeper than that of haloes that populate denser regions. The abundances of void haloes seem to evolve somewhat more strongly between redshifts $\sim 1$ and 0 than the global abundances of haloes. (abridged)Comment: 12 pages, 16 figures, submitted to MNRAS; 13 pages, 17 figures, revised version, accepted for publicatio