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Giuliano Taffoni

Publications and source records attributed to Giuliano Taffoni.

30 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Black hole mass of central galaxies and cluster mass correlation in cosmological hydro-dynamical simulations

Recently, relations connecting the SMBH mass of central galaxies and global properties of the hosting cluster, such as temperature and mass, were observed. We investigate the correlation between SMBH mass and cluster mass and temperature, their establishment and evolution. We compare their scatter to that of the classical $M_{\rm BH}-M_{\rm BCG}$ relation. We study how gas accretion and BH-BH mergers contribute to SMBH growth across cosmic time. We employed 135 groups and clusters with a mass range $1.4\times 10^{13}M_{\odot}-2.5\times 10^{15} M_{\odot}$ extracted from a set of 29 zoom-in cosmological hydro-dynamical simulations where the baryonic physics is treated with various sub-grid models, including feedback by AGN. In our simulations we find that $M_{\rm BH}$ correlates well with $M_{500}$ and $T_{500}$, with the scatter around these relations compatible within $2σ$ with the scatter around $M_{\rm BH}-M_{\rm BCG}$ at $z=0$. The $M_{\rm BH}-M_{500}$ relation evolves with time, becoming shallower at lower redshift as a direct consequence of hierarchical structure formation. On average, in our simulations the contribution of gas accretion to the total SMBH mass dominates for the majority of the cosmic time ($z>0.4$), while in the last 2 Gyr the BH-BH mergers become a larger contributor. During this last process, substructures hosting SMBHs are disrupted in the merger process with the BCG and the unbound stars enrich the diffuse stellar component rather than increase BCG mass. From the results obtained in our simulations with simple sub-grid models we conclude that the scatter around the $M_{\rm BH}-T_{500}$ relation is comparable to the scatter around the $M_{\rm BH}-M_{\rm BCG}$ relation and that, given the observational difficulties related to the estimation of the BCG mass, clusters temperature and mass can be a useful proxy for the SMBHs mass, especially at high redshift.

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Shall numerical astrophysics step into the era of Exascale computing?

High performance computing numerical simulations are today one of the more effective instruments to implement and study new theoretical models, and they are mandatory during the preparatory phase and operational phase of any scientific experiment. New challenges in Cosmology and Astrophysics will require a large number of new extremely computationally intensive simulations to investigate physical processes at different scales. Moreover, the size and complexity of the new generation of observational facilities also implies a new generation of high performance data reduction and analysis tools pushing toward the use of Exascale computing capabilities. Exascale supercomputers cannot be produced today. We discuss the major technological challenges in the design, development and use of such computing capabilities and we will report on the progresses that has been made in the last years in Europe, in particular in the framework of the ExaNeSt European funded project. We also discuss the impact of this new computing resources on the numerical codes in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

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Direct $N$-body code on low-power embedded ARM GPUs

This work arises on the environment of the ExaNeSt project aiming at design and development of an exascale ready supercomputer with low energy consumption profile but able to support the most demanding scientific and technical applications. The ExaNeSt compute unit consists of densely-packed low-power 64-bit ARM processors, embedded within Xilinx FPGA SoCs. SoC boards are heterogeneous architecture where computing power is supplied both by CPUs and GPUs, and are emerging as a possible low-power and low-cost alternative to clusters based on traditional CPUs. A state-of-the-art direct $N$-body code suitable for astrophysical simulations has been re-engineered in order to exploit SoC heterogeneous platforms based on ARM CPUs and embedded GPUs. Performance tests show that embedded GPUs can be effectively used to accelerate real-life scientific calculations, and that are promising also because of their energy efficiency, which is a crucial design in future exascale platforms.

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Astrophysical code migration into Exascale Era

The ExaNeSt and EuroExa H2020 EU-funded projects aim to design and develop an exascale ready computing platform prototype based on low-energy-consumption ARM64 cores and FPGA accelerators. We participate in the application-driven design of the hardware solutions and prototype validation. To carry on this work we are using, among others, Hy-Nbody, a state-of-the-art direct N-body code. Core algorithms of Hy-Nbody have been improved in such a way to increasingly fit them to the exascale target platform. Waiting for the ExaNest prototype release, we are performing tests and code tuning operations on an ARM64 SoC facility: a SLURM managed HPC cluster based on 64-bit ARMv8 Cortex-A72/Cortex-A53 core design and powered by a Mali-T864 embedded GPU. In parallel, we are porting a kernel of Hy-Nbody on FPGA aiming to test and compare the performance-per-watt of our algorithms on different platforms. In this paper we describe how we re-engineered the application and we show first results on ARM SoC.

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From ESPRESSO to the future -- Analysis of QSO spectra with the Astrocook package

The ESPRESSO instrument, to be commissioned in the next months at the ESO VLT, is bound to became a landmark in the field of high-resolution optical spectroscopy, both for its ground-breaking science objectives (search for Earth-like exoplanets; measure of a possible variation of fundamental constants) and for its novel approach to data treatment. For the first time for an ESO instrument, scientific information will be extracted in real time by a dedicated Data Analysis Software (DAS), which includes several interactive workflows to handle the typical analysis cases in stellar and QSO spectroscopy. Data analysis tools in the oncoming ELT era will face very demanding requirements from compelling science case, such as the Sandage Test: the need of handling larger data sizes with a higher degree of accuracy, and the possibility to compare observations and simulated data on the fly. To this purpose, we are currently porting the solutions developed for ESPRESSO to a wider framework, integrating the algorithms within a full-fledged set of Python modules. The project, named "Astrocook", is aimed to provide a set of high-level, instrument-agnostic procedures to automatically extract physical information from the data.

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Interoperable geographically distributed astronomical infrastructures: technical solutions

The increase of astronomical data produced by a new generation of observational tools poses the need to distribute data and to bring computation close to the data. Trying to answer this need, we set up a federated data and computing infrastructure involving an international cloud facility, EGI federated, and a set of services implementing IVOA standards and recommendations for authentication, data sharing and resource access. In this paper we describe technical problems faced, specifically we show the designing, technological and architectural solutions adopted. We depict our technological overall solution to bring data close to computation resources. Besides the adopted solutions, we propose some points for an open discussion on authentication and authorization mechanisms.

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Building an interoperable, distributed storage and authorization system

A joint project between the Canadian Astronomy Data Center of the National Research Council Canada, and the italian Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica-Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste (INAF-OATs), partially funded by the EGI-Engage H2020 European Project, is devoted to deploy an integrated infrastructure, based on the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) standards, to access and exploit astronomical data. Currently CADC-CANFAR provides scientists with an access, storage and computation facility, based on software libraries implementing a set of standards developed by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA). The deployment of a twin infrastructure, basically built on the same open source software libraries, has been started at INAF-OATs. This new infrastructure now provides users with an Access Control Service and a Storage Service. The final goal of the ongoing project is to build an integrated infrastructure geographycally distributed providing complete interoperability, both in users access control and data sharing. This paper describes the target infrastructure, the main user requirements covered, the technical choices and the implemented solutions.

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IVOA Recommendation: SSO - Single-Sign-On Profile: Authentication Mechanisms Version 2.0

Approved client-server authentication mechanisms are described for the IVOA single-sign-on profile: No Authentication; HTTP Basic Authentication; TLS with passwords; TLS with client certificates; Cookies; Open Authentication; Security Assertion Markup Language; OpenID. Normative rules are given for the implementation of these mechanisms, mainly by reference to pre-existing standards. The Authorization mechanisms are out of the scope of this document.

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IVOA Recommendation: IVOA Credential Delegation Protocol Version 1.0

The credential delegation protocol allows a client program to delegate a user's credentials to a service such that that service may make requests of other services in the name of that user. The protocol defines a REST service that works alongside other IVO services to enable such a delegation in a secure manner. In addition to defining the specifics of the service protocol, this document describes how a delegation service is registered in an IVOA registry along with the services it supports. The specification also explains how one can determine from a service registration that it requires the use of a supporting delegation service.

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The MORGANA model for the rise of galaxies and active nuclei

We present the MOdel for the Rise of GAlaxies aNd Active nuclei (MORGANA). Starting from the merger trees of dark matter halos and a model for the evolution of substructure within the halos, the complex physics of baryons is modeled with a set of state-of-the-art models that describe the mass, metal and energy flows between the various components and phases of a galaxy. The processes of shock-heating and cooling, star formation, feedback, galactic winds and super-winds, accretion onto BHs and AGN feedback are described by new models. In particular, the evolution of the halo gas explicitly follows the thermal and kinetic energies of the hot and cold phases, while star formation and feedback follow the results of the multi-phase model by Monaco (2004a). The increased level of sophistication allows to move from a phenomenological description of gas physics, based on simple scalings with the depth of the DM halo potential, toward a fully physically motivated one. The comparison of the predictions of MORGANA with a basic set of galactic data reveals from the one hand an overall rough agreement, and from the other hand highlights a number of well- or less-known problems: (i) producing the cutoff of the luminosity function requires to force the quenching of the late cooling flows by AGN feedback, (ii) the normalization of the Tully-Fisher relation of local spirals cannot be recovered unless the dark matter halos are assumed to have a very low concentration, (iii) the mass function of HI gas is not easily fitted at small masses, unless a similarly low concentration is assumed, (iv) there is an excess of small elliptical galaxies at z=0. These discrepancies, more than the points of agreement with data, give important clues on the missing ingredients of galaxy formation. (ABRIDGED)

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On the Life and Death of Satellite Haloes

We study the evolution of dark matter satellites orbiting inside more massive haloes using semi-analytical tools coupled with high-resolution N-Body simulations. We select initial satellite sizes, masses, orbital energies, and eccentricities as predicted by hierarchical models of structure formation. Both the satellite and the main halo are described by a Navarro, Frenk & White density profile with various concentrations.

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Disruption of satellites in cosmological haloes

We investigate how the survival of dark matter satellites inside virialized halos depends on tidal stripping and dynamical friction. We use an analytic approach and then compare the results with N-Body simulations. Both the satellites and the primary halos are similar to cosmological haloes and have NFW density profiles. Satellites can either merge with the primary halo or continue to move on barely perturbed orbits, eventually being disrupted, depending on the relative strength of friction and tidal forces. We propose that their actual fate depends simply on their mass ratio relative to the primary halo.

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