scholarly journals A high-resolution cosmological simulation of a strong gravitational lens

Author(s):  
Jack Richings ◽  
Carlos Frenk ◽  
Adrian Jenkins ◽  
Andrew Robertson ◽  
Matthieu Schaller

Abstract We present a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation of a 1013 M⊙ galaxy group and its environment (out to 10 times the virial radius) carried out using the Eagle model of galaxy formation. Exploiting a novel technique to increase the resolution of the dark matter calculation independently of that of the gas, the simulation resolves dark matter haloes and subhaloes of mass 5 × 106 M⊙. It is therefore useful for studying the abundance and properties of the haloes and subhaloes targeted in strong lensing tests of the cold dark matter model. We estimate the halo and subhalo mass functions and discuss how they are affected both by the inclusion of baryons in the simulation and by the environment. We find that the halo and subhalo mass functions have lower amplitude in the hydrodynamical simulation than in its dark matter only counterpart. This reflects the reduced growth of haloes in the hydrodynamical simulation due to the early loss of gas by reionisation and galactic winds and, additionally, in the case of subhaloes, disruption by enhanced tidal effects within the host halo due to the presence of a massive central galaxy. The distribution of haloes is highly anisotropic reflecting the filamentary character of mass accretion onto the cluster. As a result, there is significant variation in the number of structures with viewing direction. The median number of structures near the centre of the halo, when viewed in projection, is reduced by a factor of two when baryons are included.

2020 ◽  
Vol 493 (1) ◽  
pp. 1361-1374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arya Farahi ◽  
Matthew Ho ◽  
Hy Trac

ABSTRACT Cold dark matter model predicts that the large-scale structure grows hierarchically. Small dark matter haloes form first. Then, they grow gradually via continuous merger and accretion. These haloes host the majority of baryonic matter in the Universe in the form of hot gas and cold stellar phase. Determining how baryons are partitioned into these phases requires detailed modelling of galaxy formation and their assembly history. It is speculated that formation time of the same mass haloes might be correlated with their baryonic content. To evaluate this hypothesis, we employ haloes of mass above $10^{14}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$ realized by TNG300 solution of the IllustrisTNG project. Formation time is not directly observable. Hence, we rely on the magnitude gap between the brightest and the fourth brightest halo galaxy member, which is shown that traces formation time of the host halo. We compute the conditional statistics of the stellar and gas content of haloes conditioned on their total mass and magnitude gap. We find a strong correlation between magnitude gap and gas mass, BCG stellar mass, and satellite galaxies stellar mass, but not the total stellar mass of halo. Conditioning on the magnitude gap can reduce the scatter about halo property–halo mass relation and has a significant impact on the conditional covariance. Reduction in the scatter can be as significant as 30 per cent, which implies more accurate halo mass prediction. Incorporating the magnitude gap has a potential to improve cosmological constraints using halo abundance and allows us to gain insight into the baryon evolution within these systems.


Universe ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (8) ◽  
pp. 107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan de Martino ◽  
Sankha S. Chakrabarty ◽  
Valentina Cesare ◽  
Arianna Gallo ◽  
Luisa Ostorero ◽  
...  

The cold dark-matter model successfully explains both the emergence and evolution of cosmic structures on large scales and, when we include a cosmological constant, the properties of the homogeneous and isotropic Universe. However, the cold dark-matter model faces persistent challenges on the scales of galaxies. Indeed, N-body simulations predict some galaxy properties that are at odds with the observations. These discrepancies are primarily related to the dark-matter distribution in the innermost regions of the halos of galaxies and to the dynamical properties of dwarf galaxies. They may have three different origins: (1) the baryonic physics affecting galaxy formation is still poorly understood and it is thus not properly included in the model; (2) the actual properties of dark matter differs from those of the conventional cold dark matter; (3) the theory of gravity departs from General Relativity. Solving these discrepancies is a rapidly evolving research field. We illustrate some of the solutions proposed within the cold dark-matter model, and solutions when including warm dark matter, self-interacting dark matter, axion-like particles, or fuzzy dark matter. We also illustrate some modifications of the theory of gravity: Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), MOdified Gravity (MOG), and f(R) gravity.


1987 ◽  
Vol 117 ◽  
pp. 360-360
Author(s):  
Edmund Bertschinger

ABSTRACT The mass spectrum of bound baryonic systems (galaxies and globular clusters) is computed as a function of redshift in an Einstein-de Sitter (Ω=1) universe dominated by weakly interacting, cold dark matter. Baryons are assumed to fall into primordial density peaks in the cold particle distribution when the mass in the peaks exceeds the baryon Jeans mass. The distribution of peaks is computed using Gaussian statistics. As the universe expands the baryonic mass attached to a given peak increases because of infall (treated in a spherical approximation), and new peaks of lower amplitude become nonlinear. Globular clusters form first (by z∼40 if the galaxies represent a biased mass distribution). The remaining gas may be reheated to ∼10000 K if a few percent of globular cluster (or Pop. III) stars are very massive. Reheating increases the baryon Jeans mass and delays galaxy formation until z≲10. The present method reproduces the shape (but not the amplitude) of the Schechter galaxy mass function when merging of substructure is included in an approximate fashion.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (S334) ◽  
pp. 213-218
Author(s):  
Kyle A. Oman

AbstractThe apostle cosmological hydrodynamical simulation suite is a collection of twelve regions ~5 Mpc in diameter, selected to resemble the Local Group of galaxies in terms of kinematics and environment, and re-simulated at high resolution (minimum gas particle mass of 104 M⊙) using the galaxy formation model and calibration developed for the eagle project. I select a sample of dwarf galaxies (60 < Vmax/km s−1 < 120) from these simulations and construct synthetic spatially- and spectrally-resolved observations of their 21-cm emission. Using the 3Dbarolo tilted-ring modelling tool, I extract rotation curves from the synthetic data cubes. In many cases, non-circular motions present in the gas disc hinder the recovery of a rotation curve which accurately traces the underlying mass distribution; a large central deficit of dark matter, relative to the predictions of cold dark matter N-body simulations, may then be erroneously inferred.


2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (32) ◽  
pp. 2413-2427
Author(s):  
KENTARO NAGAMINE

Damped Lyman-α systems (DLAs) are useful probes of star formation and galaxy formation at high-redshift (hereafter high-z). We study the physical properties of DLAs and their relationship to Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations based on the concordance Λ cold dark matter model. Fundamental statistics such as global neutral hydrogen (H I) mass density, H I column density distribution function, DLA rate-of-incidence and mean halo mass of DLAs are reproduced reasonably well by the simulations, but with some deviations that need to be understood better in the future. We discuss the feedback effects by supernovae and galactic winds on the DLA distribution. We also compute the [C II] emission from neutral gas in high-z galaxies, and make predictions for the future observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA). Agreement and disagreement between simulations and observations are discussed, as well as the future directions of our DLA research.


2020 ◽  
Vol 499 (2) ◽  
pp. 2648-2661
Author(s):  
Aaron A Dutton ◽  
Tobias Buck ◽  
Andrea V Macciò ◽  
Keri L Dixon ◽  
Marvin Blank ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We use cosmological hydrodynamical galaxy formation simulations from the NIHAO project to investigate the response of cold dark matter (CDM) haloes to baryonic processes. Previous work has shown that the halo response is primarily a function of the ratio between galaxy stellar mass and total virial mass, and the density threshold above which gas is eligible to form stars, n[cm−3]. At low n all simulations in the literature agree that dwarf galaxy haloes are cuspy, but at high n ≳ 100 there is no consensus. We trace halo contraction in dwarf galaxies with n ≳ 100 reported in some previous simulations to insufficient spatial resolution. Provided the adopted star formation threshold is appropriate for the resolution of the simulation, we show that the halo response is remarkably stable for n ≳ 5, up to the highest star formation threshold that we test, n = 500. This free parameter can be calibrated using the observed clustering of young stars. Simulations with low thresholds n ≤ 1 predict clustering that is too weak, while simulations with high star formation thresholds n ≳ 5, are consistent with the observed clustering. Finally, we test the CDM predictions against the circular velocities of nearby dwarf galaxies. Low thresholds predict velocities that are too high, while simulations with n ∼ 10 provide a good match to the observations. We thus conclude that the CDM model provides a good description of the structure of galaxies on kpc scales provided the effects of baryons are properly captured.


2021 ◽  
Vol 503 (4) ◽  
pp. 5638-5645
Author(s):  
Gábor Rácz ◽  
István Szapudi ◽  
István Csabai ◽  
László Dobos

ABSTRACT The classical gravitational force on a torus is anisotropic and always lower than Newton’s 1/r2 law. We demonstrate the effects of periodicity in dark matter only N-body simulations of spherical collapse and standard Lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM) initial conditions. Periodic boundary conditions cause an overall negative and anisotropic bias in cosmological simulations of cosmic structure formation. The lower amplitude of power spectra of small periodic simulations is a consequence of the missing large-scale modes and the equally important smaller periodic forces. The effect is most significant when the largest mildly non-linear scales are comparable to the linear size of the simulation box, as often is the case for high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations. Spherical collapse morphs into a shape similar to an octahedron. The anisotropic growth distorts the large-scale ΛCDM dark matter structures. We introduce the direction-dependent power spectrum invariant under the octahedral group of the simulation volume and show that the results break spherical symmetry.


2021 ◽  
Vol 502 (2) ◽  
pp. 2364-2380
Author(s):  
Nilanjan Banik ◽  
Jo Bovy ◽  
Gianfranco Bertone ◽  
Denis Erkal ◽  
T J L de Boer

ABSTRACT New data from the Gaia satellite, when combined with accurate photometry from the Pan-STARRS survey, allow us to accurately estimate the properties of the GD-1 stream. Here, we analyse the stellar density variations in the GD-1 stream and show that they cannot be due to known baryonic structures such as giant molecular clouds, globular clusters, or the Milky Way’s bar or spiral arms. A joint analysis of the GD-1 and Pal 5 streams instead requires a population of dark substructures with masses ≈107–$10^9 \ \rm {M}_{\odot }$. We infer a total abundance of dark subhaloes normalized to standard cold dark matter $n_{\rm sub}/n_{\rm sub, CDM} = 0.4 ^{+0.3}_{-0.2}$ (68 per cent), which corresponds to a mass fraction contained in the subhaloes $f_{\rm {sub}} = 0.14 ^{+0.11}_{-0.07} {{\ \rm per\ cent}}$, compatible with the predictions of hydrodynamical simulation of cold dark matter with baryons.


2020 ◽  
Vol 494 (4) ◽  
pp. 4706-4712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Robertson ◽  
Richard Massey ◽  
Vincent Eke

ABSTRACT We assess a claim that observed galaxy clusters with mass ${\sim}10^{14} \mathrm{\, M_\odot }$ are more centrally concentrated than predicted in lambda cold dark matter (ΛCDM). We generate mock strong gravitational lensing observations, taking the lenses from a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, and analyse them in the same way as the real Universe. The observed and simulated lensing arcs are consistent with one another, with three main effects responsible for the previously claimed inconsistency. First, galaxy clusters containing baryonic matter have higher central densities than their counterparts simulated with only dark matter. Secondly, a sample of clusters selected because of the presence of pronounced gravitational lensing arcs preferentially finds centrally concentrated clusters with large Einstein radii. Thirdly, lensed arcs are usually straighter than critical curves, and the chosen image analysis method (fitting circles through the arcs) overestimates the Einstein radii. After accounting for these three effects, ΛCDM predicts that galaxy clusters should produce giant lensing arcs that match those in the observed Universe.


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