arXiv subjects

Claudio Dalla Vecchia

Publications and source records attributed to Claudio Dalla Vecchia.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Colours and luminosities of z=0.1 simulated galaxies in the EAGLE simulations

We calculate the colours and luminosities of redshift z = 0.1 galaxies from the EAGLE simulation suite using the GALAXEV population synthesis models. We take into account obscuration by dust in birth clouds and diffuse ISM using a two-component screen model, following the prescription of Charlot and Fall. We compare models in which the dust optical depth is constant to models where it depends on gas metallicity, gas fraction and orientation. The colours of EAGLE galaxies for the more sophisticated models are in broad agreement with those of observed galaxies. In particular, EAGLE produces a red sequence of passive galaxies and a blue cloud of star forming galaxies, with approximately the correct fraction of galaxies in each population and with g-r colours within 0.1 magnitudes of those observed. Luminosity functions from UV to NIR wavelengths differ from observations at a level comparable to systematic shifts resulting from a choice between Petrosian and Kron photometric apertures. Despite the generally good agreement there are clear discrepancies with observations. The blue cloud of EAGLE galaxies extends to somewhat higher luminosities than in the data, consistent with the modest underestimate of the passive fraction in massive EAGLE galaxies. There is also a moderate excess of bright blue galaxies compared to observations. The overall level of agreement with the observed colour distribution suggests that EAGLE galaxies at z = 0.1 have ages, metallicities and levels of obscuration that are comparable to those of observed galaxies.

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arXiv2015

The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: calibration of subgrid physics and model variations

We present results from thirteen cosmological simulations that explore the parameter space of the "Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments" (EAGLE) simulation project. Four of the simulations follow the evolution of a periodic cube L = 50 cMpc on a side, and each employs a different subgrid model of the energetic feedback associated with star formation. The relevant parameters were adjusted so that the simulations each reproduce the observed galaxy stellar mass function at z = 0.1. Three of the simulations fail to form disc galaxies as extended as observed, and we show analytically that this is a consequence of numerical radiative losses that reduce the efficiency of stellar feedback in high-density gas. Such losses are greatly reduced in the fourth simulation - the EAGLE reference model - by injecting more energy in higher density gas. This model produces galaxies with the observed size distribution, and also reproduces many galaxy scaling relations. In the remaining nine simulations, a single parameter or process of the reference model was varied at a time. We find that the properties of galaxies with stellar mass <~ M* (the "knee" of the galaxy stellar mass function) are largely governed by feedback associated with star formation, while those of more massive galaxies are also controlled by feedback from accretion onto their central black holes. Both processes must be efficient in order to reproduce the observed galaxy population. In general, simulations that have been calibrated to reproduce the low-redshift galaxy stellar mass function will still not form realistic galaxies, but the additional requirement that galaxy sizes be acceptable leads to agreement with a large range of observables.

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arXiv2015

nIFTy galaxy cluster simulations I: dark matter & non-radiative models

We have simulated the formation of a galaxy cluster in a $Λ$CDM universe using twelve different codes modeling only gravity and non-radiative hydrodynamics (\art, \arepo, \hydra\ and 9 incarnations of GADGET). This range of codes includes particle based, moving and fixed mesh codes as well as both Eulerian and Lagrangian fluid schemes. The various GADGET implementations span traditional and advanced smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) schemes. The goal of this comparison is to assess the reliability of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of clusters in the simplest astrophysically relevant case, that in which the gas is assumed to be non-radiative. We compare images of the cluster at $z=0$, global properties such as mass, and radial profiles of various dynamical and thermodynamical quantities. The underlying gravitational framework can be aligned very accurately for all the codes allowing a detailed investigation of the differences that develop due to the various gas physics implementations employed. As expected, the mesh-based codes ART and AREPO form extended entropy cores in the gas with rising central gas temperatures. Those codes employing traditional SPH schemes show falling entropy profiles all the way into the very centre with correspondingly rising density profiles and central temperature inversions. We show that methods with modern SPH schemes that allow entropy mixing span the range between these two extremes and the latest SPH variants produce gas entropy profiles that are essentially indistinguishable from those obtained with grid based methods.

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arXiv2014

Local Group galaxies emerge from the dark

The "Lambda Cold Dark Matter" (LCDM) model of cosmic structure formation is eminently falsifiable: once its parameters are fixed on large scales, it becomes testable in the nearby Universe. Observations within our Local Group of galaxies, including the satellite populations of the Milky Way and Andromeda, appear to contradict LCDM predictions: there are far fewer satellite galaxies than dark matter halos (the "missing satellites" problem), galaxies seem to avoid the largest substructures (the "too big to fail" problem), and the brightest satellites appear to orbit their host galaxies on a thin plane (the "planes of satellites" problem). We present results from the first hydrodynamic simulations of the Local Group that match the observed abundance of galaxies. We find that when baryonic and dark matter are followed simultaneously in the context of a realistic galaxy formation model, all three "problems" are resolved within the LCDM paradigm.

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arXiv2014

The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments

We introduce the Virgo Consortium's EAGLE project, a suite of hydrodynamical simulations that follow the formation of galaxies and black holes in representative volumes. We discuss the limitations of such simulations in light of their finite resolution and poorly constrained subgrid physics, and how these affect their predictive power. One major improvement is our treatment of feedback from massive stars and AGN in which thermal energy is injected into the gas without the need to turn off cooling or hydrodynamical forces, allowing winds to develop without predetermined speed or mass loading factors. Because the feedback efficiencies cannot be predicted from first principles, we calibrate them to the z~0 galaxy stellar mass function and the amplitude of the galaxy-central black hole mass relation, also taking galaxy sizes into account. The observed galaxy mass function is reproduced to $\lesssim 0.2$ dex over the full mass range, $10^8 < M_*/M_\odot \lesssim 10^{11}$, a level of agreement close to that attained by semi-analytic models, and unprecedented for hydrodynamical simulations. We compare our results to a representative set of low-redshift observables not considered in the calibration, and find good agreement with the observed galaxy specific star formation rates, passive fractions, Tully-Fisher relation, total stellar luminosities of galaxy clusters, and column density distributions of intergalactic CIV and OVI. While the mass-metallicity relations for gas and stars are consistent with observations for $M_* \gtrsim 10^9 M_\odot$, they are insufficiently steep at lower masses. The gas fractions and temperatures are too high for clusters of galaxies, but for groups these discrepancies can be resolved by adopting a higher heating temperature in the subgrid prescription for AGN feedback. EAGLE constitutes a valuable new resource for studies of galaxy formation.

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arXiv2014

The First Billion Years project: dark matter haloes going from contraction to expansion and back again

We study the effect of baryons on the inner dark matter profile of the first galaxies using the First Billion Years simulation between z=16-6 before secular evolution sets in. Using a large statistical sample from two simulations of the same volume and cosmological initial conditions, one with and one without baryons, we are able to directly compare haloes with their baryon-free counterparts, allowing a detailed study of the modifications to the dark matter density profile due to the presence of baryons during the first billion years of galaxy formation. For each of the ~ 5000 haloes in our sample we quantify the impact of the baryons using eta, defined as the ratio of dark matter mass enclosed in 100 pc in the baryonic run to its counterpart without baryons. During this epoch of rapid growth of galaxies, we find that many haloes of these first galaxies show an enhancement of dark matter in the halo centre compared to the baryon-free simulation, while many others show a deficit. We find that the mean value of eta is close to unity, but there is a large dispersion, with a standard deviation of 0.677. The enhancement is cyclical in time and tracks the star formation cycle of the galaxy; as gas falls to the centre and forms stars, the dark matter moves in as well. Supernova feedback then removes the gas, and the dark matter again responds to the changing potential. We study three physical models relating the motion of baryons to that of the dark matter: adiabatic contraction, dynamical friction, and rapid outflows. Abridged, see text for full abstract

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arXiv2014

The impact of galaxy formation on the total mass, mass profile and abundance of haloes

We use cosmological hydrodynamical simulations to investigate how the inclusion of physical processes relevant to galaxy formation (star formation, metal-line cooling, stellar winds, supernovae and feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei, AGN) change the properties of haloes, over four orders of magnitude in mass. We find that gas expulsion and the associated dark matter (DM) expansion induced by supernova-driven winds are important for haloes with masses M200 < 10^13 Msun, lowering their masses by up to 20% relative to a DM-only model. AGN feedback, which is required to prevent overcooling, has a significant impact on halo masses all the way up to cluster scales (M200 ~ 10^15 Msun). Baryonic physics changes the total mass profiles of haloes out to several times the virial radius, a modification that cannot be captured by a change in the halo concentration. The decrease in the total halo mass causes a decrease in the halo mass function of about 20%. This effect can have important consequences for abundance matching technique as well as for most semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. We provide analytic fitting formulae, derived from simulations that reproduce the observed baryon fractions, to correct halo masses and mass functions from DM-only simulations. The effect of baryonic physics (AGN feedback in particular) on cluster number counts is about as large as changing the cosmology from WMAP7 to Planck, even when a moderately high mass limit of M500 ~ 10^14 Msun is adopted. Thus, for precision cosmology the effects of baryons must be accounted for.

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arXiv2014

Bent by baryons: the low mass galaxy-halo relation

The relation between galaxies and dark matter halos is of vital importance for evaluating theoretical predictions of structure formation and galaxy formation physics. We show that the widely used method of abundance matching based on dark matter only simulations fails at the low mass end because two of its underlying assumptions are broken: only a small fraction of low mass (below 10^9.5 solar masses) halos host a visible galaxy, and halos grow at a lower rate due to the effect of baryons. In this regime, reliance on dark matter only simulations for abundance matching is neither accurate nor self-consistent. We find that the reported discrepancy between observational estimates of the halo masses of dwarf galaxies and the values predicted by abundance matching does not point to a failure of LCDM, but simply to a failure to account for baryonic effects. Our results also imply that the Local Group contains only a few hundred observable galaxies in contrast with the thousands of faint dwarfs that abundance matching would suggest. We show how relations derived from abundance matching can be corrected, so that they can be used self-consistently to calibrate models of galaxy formation.

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arXiv2014

The impact of baryonic processes on the two-point correlation functions of galaxies, subhaloes and matter

The observed clustering of galaxies and the cross-correlation of galaxies and mass provide important constraints on both cosmology and models of galaxy formation. Even though the dissipation and feedback processes associated with galaxy formation are thought to affect the distribution of matter, essentially all models used to predict clustering data are based on collisionless simulations. Here, we use large hydrodynamical simulations to investigate how galaxy formation affects the autocorrelation functions of galaxies and subhaloes, as well as their cross-correlation with matter. We show that the changes due to the inclusion of baryons are not limited to small scales and are even present in samples selected by subhalo mass. Samples selected by subhalo mass cluster ~10% more strongly in a baryonic run on scales r > 1Mpc/h, and this difference increases for smaller separations. While the inclusion of baryons boosts the clustering at fixed subhalo mass on all scales, the sign of the effect on the cross-correlation of subhaloes with matter can vary with radius. We show that the large-scale effects are due to the change in subhalo mass caused by the strong feedback associated with galaxy formation and may therefore not affect samples selected by number density. However, on scales r < r_vir significant differences remain after accounting for the change in subhalo mass. We conclude that predictions for galaxy-galaxy and galaxy-mass clustering from models based on collisionless simulations will have errors greater than 10% on sub-Mpc scales, unless the simulation results are modified to correctly account for the effects of baryons on the distributions of mass and satellites.

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arXiv2013

The Impact of Different Physical Processes on the Statistics of Lyman-limit and Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers

We compute the z = 3 neutral hydrogen column density distribution function f(NHI) for 19 simulations drawn from the OWLS project using a post-processing correction for self-shielding calculated with full radiative transfer of the ionising background radiation. We investigate how different physical processes and parameters affect the abundance of Lyman-limit systems (LLSs) and damped Lyman-alpha absorbers (DLAs) including: i) metal-line cooling; ii) the efficiency of feedback from SNe and AGN; iii) the effective equation of state for the ISM; iv) cosmological parameters; v) the assumed star formation law and; vi) the timing of hydrogen reionization . We find that the normalisation and slope, D = d log10 f /d log10 NHI, of f(NHI) in the LLS regime are robust to changes in these physical processes. Among physically plausible models, f(NHI) varies by less than 0.2 dex and D varies by less than 0.18 for LLSs. This is primarily due to the fact that these uncertain physical processes mostly affect star-forming gas which contributes less than 10% to f(NHI) in the the LLS column density range. At higher column densities, variations in f(NHI) become larger (approximately 0.5 dex at NHI = 10^22 cm^-2 and 1.0 dex at NHI = 10^23 cm^-2) and molecular hydrogen formation also becomes important. Many of these changes can be explained in the context of self-regulated star formation in which the amount of star forming gas in a galaxy will adjust such that outflows driven by feedback balance inflows due to accretion. Data and code to reproduce all figures can be found at the following url: https://bitbucket.org/galtay/hi-cddf-owls-1

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arXiv2013

Physical properties of simulated galaxy populations at z=2 - I. Effect of metal-line cooling and feedback from star formation and AGN

We use hydrodynamical simulations from the OWLS project to investigate the dependence of the physical properties of galaxy populations at redshift 2 on metal-line cooling and feedback from star formation and active galactic nuclei (AGN). We find that if the sub-grid feedback from star formation is implemented kinetically, the feedback is only efficient if the initial wind velocity exceeds a critical value. This critical velocity increases with galaxy mass and also if metal-line cooling is included. This suggests that radiative losses quench the winds if their initial velocity is too low. If the feedback is efficient, then the star formation rate is inversely proportional to the amount of energy injected per unit stellar mass formed (which is proportional to the initial mass loading for a fixed wind velocity). This can be understood if the star formation is self-regulating, i.e. if the star formation rate (and thus the gas fraction) increase until the outflow rate balances the inflow rate. Feedback from AGN is efficient at high masses, while increasing the initial wind velocity with gas pressure or halo mass allows one to generate galaxy-wide outflows at all masses. Matching the observed galaxy mass function requires efficient feedback. In particular, the predicted faint-end slope is too steep unless we resort to highly mass loaded winds for low-mass objects. Such efficient feedback from low-mass galaxies (M_* << 10^10 Msun) also reduces the discrepancy with the observed specific star formation rates, which are higher than predicted unless the feedback transitions from highly efficient to inefficient just below the observed stellar mass range.

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arXiv2013

Physical properties of simulated galaxy populations at z=2 - II. Effects of cosmology, reionization and ISM physics

We use hydrodynamical simulations from the OWLS project to investigate the dependence of the physical properties of galaxy populations at redshift 2 on the assumed star formation law, the equation of state imposed on the unresolved interstellar medium, the stellar initial mass function, the reionization history, and the assumed cosmology. This work complements that of Paper I, where we studied the effects of varying models for galactic winds driven by star formation and AGN. The normalisation of the matter power spectrum strongly affects the galaxy mass function, but has a relatively small effect on the physical properties of galaxies residing in haloes of a fixed mass. Reionization suppresses the stellar masses and gas fractions of low-mass galaxies, but by z = 2 the results are insensitive to the timing of reionization. The stellar initial mass function mainly determines the physical properties of galaxies through its effect on the efficiency of the feedback, while changes in the recycled mass and metal fractions play a smaller role. If we use a recipe for star formation that reproduces the observed star formation law independently of the assumed equation of state of the unresolved ISM, then the latter is unimportant. The star formation law, i.e. the gas consumption time scale as a function of surface density, determines the mass of dense, star-forming gas in galaxies, but affects neither the star formation rate nor the stellar mass. This can be understood in terms of self-regulation: the gas fraction adjusts until the outflow rate balances the inflow rate.

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arXiv2013

A measurement of galaxy halo mass from the surrounding HI Lyα absorption

We measure the dark matter halo masses of z~2.36 UV color-selected star-forming galaxies by matching the observed median HI Lyα absorption around them, as observed in the spectra of background QSOs, to the absorption around haloes above a given mass in cosmological simulations. Focusing on transverse separations 0-2 pMpc and line of sight separations 154-616 km/s, we find a minimum halo mass of log10(Mmin/Msun)=11.6(+0.2)(-0.2), which is in good agreement with published halo mass estimates from clustering analyses. We verified that the measured halo mass is insensitive to a change in the cosmological parameters (WMAP1 vs. WMAP3) and to the inclusion of strong AGN feedback. One unique strength of this method is that it can be used in narrow field galaxy-QSO surveys, i.e. ~30 x 30 arcseconds. In addition, we find that the observed anisotropy in the 2-D HI Lyα absorption distribution on scales of 1.5-2 pMpc is consistent with being a consequence of large-scale gas infall into the potential wells occupied by galaxies.

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arXiv2012

The First Billion Years project - IV: Proto-galaxies reionising the Universe

The contribution of stars in galaxies to cosmic reionisation depends on the star formation history in the Universe, the abundance of galaxies during reionisation, the escape fraction of ionising photons and the clumping factor of the inter-galactic medium (IGM). We compute the star formation rate and clumping factor during reionisation in a cosmological volume using a high-resolution hydrodynamical simulation. We post-process the output with detailed radiative transfer simulations to compute the escape fraction of ionising photons. Together, this gives us the opportunity to assess the contribution of galaxies to reionisation self-consistently. The strong mass and redshift dependence of the escape fraction indicates that reionisation occurred between z=15 and z=10 and was mainly driven by proto-galaxies forming in dark-matter haloes with masses between 1e7 and 1e8 solar mass. More massive galaxies that are rare at these redshifts and have significantly lower escape fractions contribute less photons to the reionisation process than the more-abundant low-mass galaxies. Star formation in the low-mass haloes is suppressed by radiative feedback from reionisation, therefore these proto-galaxies only contribute when the part of the Universe they live in is still neutral. After z~10, massive galaxies become more abundant and provide most of the ionising photons. In addition, we find that Population (Pop) III stars are too short-lived and not frequent enough to have a major contribution to reionisation. Although the stellar component of the proto-galaxies that produce the bulk of ionising photons during reionisation is too faint to be detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), these sources are brightest in the H-alpha and Ly-alpha recombination lines, which will likely be detected by JWST in deep surveys.

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arXiv2012

Ubiquitous seeding of supermassive black holes by direct collapse

We study for the first time the environment of massive black hole (BH) seeds (~10^4-5 Msun) formed via the direct collapse of pristine gas clouds in massive haloes (>10^7 Msun) at z>6. Our model is based on the evolution of dark matter haloes within a cosmological N-body simulation, combined with prescriptions for the formation of BH along with both Pop III and Pop II stars. We calculate the spatially-varying intensity of Lyman Werner (LW) radiation from stars and identify the massive pristine haloes in which it is high enough to shut down molecular hydrogen cooling. In contrast to previous BH seeding models with a spatially constant LW background, we find that the intensity of LW radiation due to local sources, J_local, can be up to 10^6 times the spatially averaged background in the simulated volume and exceeds the critical value, J_crit, for the complete suppression of molecular cooling, in some cases by 4 orders of magnitude. Even after accounting for possible metal pollution in a halo from previous episodes of star formation, we find a steady rise in the formation rate of direct collapse (DC) BHs with decreasing redshift from 10^{-3}/Mpc^3/z at z=12 to 10^{-2}/Mpc^3/z at z=6. The onset of Pop II star formation at z~16 simultaneously marks the onset of the epoch of DCBH formation, as the increased level of LW radiation from Pop II stars is able to elevate the local levels of the LW intensity to J_local > J_crit while Pop III stars fail to do so at any time. The number density of DCBHs is sensitive to the number of LW photons and can vary by an order of magnitude at z=6 after accounting for reionisation feedback. Haloes hosting DCBHs are more clustered than similar massive counterparts that do not host DCBHs, especially at redshifts z>10. We also show that planned surveys with JWST should be able to detect the supermassive stellar precursors of DCBHs.

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arXiv2012

Rotation rates, sizes, and star formation efficiencies of a representative population of simulated disc galaxies

We examine the rotation rates, sizes, and star formation (SF) efficiencies of a representative population of simulated disc galaxies extracted from the Galaxies-Intergalactic Medium Interaction Calculation (GIMIC) suite of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. These simulations include efficient, but energetically feasible supernova feedback, but have not been tuned in any way to produce 'realistic' disc galaxies. Yet, they generate a large number of discs, without requiring extremely high resolution. Over the wide galaxy stellar mass range, 9.0 < log10[Mstar (Msun)] < 10.5, the simulations reproduce the observed Tully-Fisher relation, the rotation curves of disc galaxies in bins of stellar mass, the mass-size relation of disc galaxies, the optical rotation to virial circular velocity ratio (Vopt/Vvir), and the SF efficiencies of disc galaxies as inferred from stacked weak lensing and stacked satellite kinematics observations. They also reproduce the specific star formation rates of ~L* galaxies but predict too low levels of star formation for low-mass galaxies, which is plausibly due to the finite resolution of the simulations. At higher stellar masses, log10[Mstar (\Msun)] > 10.6, the simulated galaxies are too concentrated and have too high SF efficiencies. We conjecture that this shortcoming reflects the neglect of feedback from accreting supermassive black holes in these simulations. We conclude that it is possible to generate a representative population of disc galaxies that reproduces many of the observed trends of local disc galaxies using standard numerical hydrodynamic techniques and a plausible implementation of the "subgrid" astrophysical processes thought to be relevant to galaxy formation.

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arXiv2012

The Origin of Disks and Spheroids in Simulated Galaxies

In the simplest scenario, disk galaxies form predominantly in halos with high angular momentum and quiet recent assembly history, whereas spheroids are the slowly-rotating remnants of repeated merging events. We explore these assumptions using one hundred systems with halo masses similar to that of the Milky Way, identified in a series of cosmological gasdynamical simulations GIMIC. At z=0, the simulated galaxies exhibit a wide variety of morphologies, from dispersion-dominated spheroids to pure disk galaxies. Surprisingly, these morphological features are very poorly correlated with their halo properties: disks form in halos with high and low net spin, and mergers play a negligible role in the formation of spheroid stars, most of which form in-situ. More important to morphology is the coherent alignment of the angular momentum of baryons that accrete over time to form a galaxy. Spheroids tend to form when the spin of newly-accreted gas is misaligned with that of the extant galaxy, leading to the episodic formation of stars with different kinematics that cancel out the net rotation of the system. Disks, on the other hand, form out of gas that flows in with similar angular momentum to that of earlier-accreted material. Gas accretion from a hot corona thus favours disk formation, whereas gas that flows "cold", often along separate, misaligned filaments, favours the formation of spheroids. In this scenario, most spheroids consist of superpositions of stellar components with distinct kinematics, age, and metallicity, an arrangement that might survive to the present day given the paucity of major mergers. Since angular momentum is acquired largely at turnaround, morphology is imprinted early by the interplay of the tidal field and the shape of the material destined to form the galaxy.

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arXiv2012

Simulating galactic outflows with thermal supernova feedback

Cosmological simulations make use of sub-grid recipes for the implementation of galactic winds driven by massive stars because direct injection of supernova energy in thermal form leads to strong radiative losses, rendering the feedback inefficient. We argue that the main cause of the catastrophic cooling is a mismatch between the mass of the gas in which the energy is injected and the mass of the parent stellar population. Because too much mass is heated, the temperatures are too low and the cooling times too short. We use analytic arguments to estimate, as a function of the gas density and the numerical resolution, the minimum heating temperature that is required for the injected thermal energy to be efficiently converted into kinetic energy. We then propose and test a stochastic implementation of thermal feedback that uses this minimum temperature increase as an input parameter and that can be employed in both particle- and grid-based codes. We use smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations to test the method on models of isolated disc galaxies in dark matter haloes with total mass 10^10 and 10^12 h^-1 solar masses. The thermal feedback strongly suppresses the star formation rate and can drive massive, large-scale outflows without the need to turn off radiative cooling temporarily. In accord with expectations derived from analytic arguments, for sufficiently high resolution the results become insensitive to the imposed temperature jump and also agree with high-resolution simulations employing kinetic feedback.

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