arXiv subjects

Gustavo Yepes

Publications and source records attributed to Gustavo Yepes.

At least 181 records · Page 10Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Halo mass distribution reconstruction across the cosmic web

We study the relation between halo mass and its environment from a probabilistic perspective. We find that halo mass depends not only on local dark matter density, but also on non-local quantities such as the cosmic web environment and the halo-exclusion effect. Given these accurate relations, we have developed the HADRON-code (Halo mAss Distribution ReconstructiON), a technique which permits us to assign halo masses to a distribution of haloes in three-dimensional space. This can be applied to the fast production of mock galaxy catalogues, by assigning halo masses, and reproducing accurately the bias for different mass cuts. The resulting clustering of the halo populations agree well with that drawn from the BigMultiDark $N$-body simulation: the power spectra are within 1-$σ$ up to scales of $k=0.2\,h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$, when using augmented Lagrangian perturbation theory based mock catalogues. Only the most massive haloes show a larger deviation. For these, we find evidence of the halo-exclusion effect. A clear improvement is achieved when assigning the highest masses to haloes with a minimum distance separation. We also compute the 2- and 3-point correlation functions, and find an excellent agreement with $N$-body results. Our work represents a quantitative application of the cosmic web classification. It can have further interesting applications in the multi-tracer analysis of the large-scale structure for future galaxy surveys.

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arXiv2015

The Effect of Environment on Milky Way-mass galaxies in a Constrained Simulation of the Local Group

In this letter we present, for the first time, a study of star formation rate, gas fraction and galaxy morphology of a constrained simulation of the Milky Way (MW) and Andromeda (M31) galaxies, compared to other MW-mass galaxies. By combining with unconstrained simulations we cover a sufficient volume to compare these galaxies environmental densities ranging from the field to that of the Local Group (LG). This is particularly relevant as it has been shown that, quite generally, galaxy properties depend intimately upon their environment, most prominently when galaxies in clusters are compared to those in the field. For galaxies in loose groups such as the LG, however, environmental effects have been less clear. We consider the galaxy's environmental density in spheres of 1200 kpc (comoving) and find that whilst environment does not appear to directly affect morphology, there is a positive trend with star formation rates. This enhancement in star formation occurs systematically for galaxies in higher density environments, regardless whether they are part of the LG or in filaments. Our simulations suggest that the richer environment at Mpc-scales may help replenish the star-forming gas, allowing higher specific star formation rates in galaxies such as the MW.

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arXiv2014

Hunting down systematics in baryon acoustic oscillations after cosmic high noon

Future dark energy experiments will require better and more accurate theoretical predictions for the baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) signature in the spectrum of cosmological perturbations. Here, we use large N-body simulations of the \LambdaCDM Planck cosmology to study any possible systematic shifts and damping in BAO due to the impact of nonlinear gravitational growth of structure, scale dependent and non-local bias, and redshift-space distortions. The effect of cosmic variance is largely reduced by dividing the tracer power spectrum by that from a BAO-free simulation starting with the same phases. This permits us to study with unprecedented accuracy (better than 0.02% for dark matter and 0.07% for low-bias halos) small shifts of the pristine BAO wavenumbers towards larger k, and non-linear damping of BAO wiggles in the power spectrum of dark matter and halo populations in the redshift range z=0-1. For dark matter, we provide an accurate parametrization of the evolution of αas a function of the linear growth factor D(z). For halo samples, with bias ranging from 1.2 to 2.8, we measure a typical BAO shift of ~0.25%, observed in real-space, which does not show an appreciable evolution with redshift within the uncertainties. Moreover, we report a constant shift as a function of halo bias. We find a different evolution of the damping of the acoustic feature in all halo samples as compared to dark matter with haloes suffering less damping, and also find some weak dependence on bias. A larger BAO shift and damping is measured in redshift-space which can be well explained by linear theory due to redshift-space distortions. A clear modulation in phase with the acoustic scale is observed in the scale-dependent halo bias due to the presence of the baryonic acoustic oscillations.

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arXiv2014

Ram pressure statistics for bent tail radio galaxies

In this paper we use the MareNostrum Universe Simulation, a large scale, hydrodynamic, non-radiative simulation in combination with a simple abundance matching approach to determine the ram pressure statistics for bent radio sources (BRSs). The abundance matching approach allows us to determine the locations of all galaxies with stellar masses $> 10^{11} MSol$ in the simulation volume. Assuming ram pressure exceeding a critical value causes bent morphology, we compute the ratio of all galaxies exceeding the ram pressure limit (RPEX galaxies) relative to all galaxies in our sample. According to our model 50% of the RPEX galaxies at $z = 0$ are found in clusters with masses larger than $10^{14.5}MSol$ the other half resides in lower mass clusters. Therefore, the appearance of bent tail morphology alone does not put tight constraints on the host cluster mass. In low mass clusters, $M < 10^{14}MSol$, RPEX galaxies are confined to the central 500 kpc whereas in clusters of $> 10^{15}Msol$ they can be found at distances up to 1.5Mpc. Only clusters with masses $> 10^{15}MSol $ are likely to host more than one BRS. Both criteria may prove useful in the search for distant, high mass clusters.

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arXiv2014

Constraining the halo bispectrum in real and redshift space from perturbation theory and non-linear stochastic bias

We present a method to produce mock galaxy catalogues with efficient perturbation theory schemes, which match the number density, power spectra and bispectra in real and in redshift space from N-body simulations. The essential contribution of this work is the way in which we constrain the bias parameters in the PATCHY-code. In addition of aiming at reproducing the two-point statistics, we seek the set of bias parameters, which constrain the univariate halo probability distribution function (PDF) encoding higher-order correlation functions. We demonstrate that halo catalogues based on the same underlying dark matter field with a fix halo number density, and accurately matching the power spectrum (within 2%), can lead to very different bispectra depending on the adopted halo bias model. A model ignoring the shape of the halo PDF can lead to deviations up to factors of 2. The catalogues obtained additionally constraining the shape of the halo PDF can significantly lower the discrepancy in the three-point statistics, yielding closely unbiased bispectra both in real and in redshift space; which are in general compatible with those corresponding to an N-body simulation within 10% (deviating at most up to 20%). Our calculations show that the constant linear bias of ~2 for Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) like galaxies seen in the power spectrum, mainly comes from sampling halos in high density peaks, choosing a high density threshold rather than from a factor multiplying the dark matter density field. Our method contributes towards an efficient modelling of the halo/galaxy distribution required to estimate uncertainties in the clustering measurements from galaxy redshift surveys. We have also demonstrated that it represents a powerful tool to test various bias models.

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arXiv2014

The Imprint of Reionization on the Star Formation Histories of Dwarf Galaxies

We explore the impact of cosmic reionization on nearby isolated dwarf galaxies using a compilation of SFHs estimated from deep HST data and a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation of the Local Group. The nearby dwarfs show a wide diversity of star formation histories; from ancient systems that have largely completed their star formation $\sim 10$ Gyr ago to young dwarfs that have formed the majority of their stars in the past $\sim 5$ Gyr to two-component systems characterized by the overlap of comparable numbers of old and young stars. Taken as an ensemble, star formation in nearby dwarfs dips to lower-than-average rates at intermediate times ($4<t$/Gyr $<8$), a feature that we trace in the simulation to the effects of cosmic reionization. Reionization heats the gas and drives it out of the shallow potential wells of low mass halos, affecting especially those below a sharp mass threshold that corresponds to a virial temperature of $\sim 2 \times 10^4 $ $\mathrm{K}$ at $z_{\rm reion}$. The loss of baryons leads to a sharp decline in the star forming activity of early-collapsing systems, which, compounded by feedback from early star formation, empties halos of gas and leaves behind systems where a single old stellar component prevails. In halos below the threshold at $z_{\rm reion}$, reionization heating leads to a delay in the onset of star formation that lasts until the halo grows massive enough to allow some of the remaining gas to cool and form stars. Young stellar components therefore dominate in dwarfs whose halos assemble late and thus form few stars before reionization. Two-component systems may be traced to late mergers of individual examples of the two aforementioned cases. The relative dearth of intermediate-age stars in nearby dwarfs might thus be the clearest signature yet identified of the imprint of cosmic reionization on the star formation history of dwarf galaxies.

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arXiv2014

Hydrodynamical simulations of coupled and uncoupled quintessence models II: Galaxy clusters

We study the $z=0$ properties of clusters (and large groups) of galaxies within the context of interacting and non-interacting quintessence cosmological models, using a series of adiabatic SPH simulations. Initially, we examine the average properties of groups and clusters, quantifying their differences in LCDM, uncoupled Dark Energy (\ude) and coupled Dark Energy (\cde) cosmologies. In particular, we focus upon radial profiles of the gas density, temperature and pressure, and we also investigate how the standard hydrodynamic equilibrium hypothesis holds in quintessence cosmologies. While we are able to confirm previous results about the distribution of baryons, we also find that the main discrepancy (with differences up to $20\%$) can be seen in cluster pressure profiles. We then switch attention to individual structures, mapping each halo in quintessence cosmology to its \LCDM\ counterpart. We are able to identify a series of small correlations between the coupling in the dark sector and halo spin, triaxiality and virialization ratio. When looking at spin and virialization of dark matter haloes, we find a weak ($5\%$) but systematic deviation in fifth force scenarios from \LCDM.

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arXiv2014

Hydrodynamical simulations of coupled and uncoupled quintessence models I: Halo properties and the cosmic web

We present the results of a series of adiabatic hydrodynamical simulations of several quintessence models (both with a free and an interacting scalar field) in comparison to a standard \LCDM\ cosmology. For each we use $2\times1024^3$ particles in a $250$\hMpc\ periodic box assuming WMAP7 cosmology. In this work we focus on the properties of haloes in the cosmic web at $z=0$. The web is classified into \emph{voids}, \emph{sheets}, \emph{filaments} and \emph{knots} depending on the eigenvalues of the velocity shear tensor, which are an excellent proxy for the underlying overdensity distribution. We find that the properties of objects classified according to their surrounding environment shows a substantial dependence on the underlying cosmology; for example, while $V_{\rm max}$ shows average deviations of $\approx5$ per cent across the different models when considering the full halo sample, comparing objects classified according to their environment, the size of the deviation can be as large as $20$ per cent. We also find that halo spin parameters are positively correlated to the coupling, whereas halo concentrations show the opposite behaviour. Furthermore, when studying the concentration-mass relation in different environments, we find that in all cosmologies underdense regions have a larger normalization and a shallower slope. While this behaviour is found to characterize all the models, differences in the best-fit relations are enhanced in (coupled) dark energy, thus providing a clearer prediction for this class of models.

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arXiv2014

The MUSIC of Galaxy Clusters II: X-ray global properties and scaling relations

We present the X-ray properties and scaling relations of a large sample of clusters extracted from the Marenostrum MUltidark SImulations of galaxy Clusters (MUSIC) dataset. We focus on a sub-sample of 179 clusters at redshift z~0.11, with 3.2e14M_sun/h<M_vir<2e15Msun/h, complete in mass. We employed the X-ray photon simulator PHOX to obtain synthetic Chandra Observations and derive observable-like global properties of the intracluster medium (ICM), as X-ray temperature (T_X) and luminosity (L_X). T_X is found to slightly under-estimate the true mass-weighted temperature, although tracing fairly well the cluster total mass. We also study the effects of T_X on scaling relations with cluster intrinsic properties: total (M_500) and gas (M_g500) mass; integrated Compton parameter (Y_SZ) of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) thermal effect; Y_X=M_g500 T_X. We confirm that Y_X is a very good mass proxy, with a scatter on M_500-Y_X and Y_SZ-Y_X lower than 5%. The study of scaling relations among X-ray, intrinsic and SZ properties indicates that MUSIC clusters reasonably resemble the self-similar prediction, especially for correlations involving T_X. The observational approach also allows for a more direct comparison with real clusters, from which we find deviations mainly due to the physical description of the ICM, affecting T_X and, particularly, L_X.

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arXiv2013

Cosmic variance of the local Hubble flow in large-scale cosmological simulations

The increasing precision in the determination of the Hubble parameter has reached a per cent level at which large-scale cosmic flows induced by inhomogeneities of the matter distribution become non-negligible. Here we use large-scale cosmological N-body simulations to study statistical properties of the local Hubble parameter as measured by local observers. We show that the distribution of the local Hubble parameter depends not only on the scale of inhomogeneities, but also on how one defines the positions of observers in the cosmic web and what reference frame is used. Observers located in random dark matter haloes measure on average lower expansion rates than those at random positions in space or in the centres of cosmic voids, and this effect is stronger from the halo rest frames compared to the CMB rest frame. We compare the predictions for the local Hubble parameter with observational constraints based on type Ia supernovae (SNIa) and CMB observations. Due to cosmic variance, for observers located in random haloes we show that the Hubble constant determined from nearby SNIa may differ from that measured from the CMB by 0.8 per cent at 1sigma statistical significance. This scatter is too small to significantly alleviate a recently claimed discrepancy between current measurements assuming a flat LCDM model. However, for observers located in the centres of the largest voids permitted by the standard LCDM model, we find that Hubble constant measurements from SNIa would be biased high by 5 per cent, rendering this tension inexistent in this extreme case.

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arXiv2013

Dark Matter in the Local Universe

We review how dark matter is distributed in our local neighbourhood from an observational and theoretical perspective. We will start by describing first the dark matter halo of our own galaxy and in the Local Group. Then we proceed to describe the dark matter distribution in the more extended area known as the Local Universe. Depending on the nature of dark matter, numerical simulations predict different abundances of substructures in Local Group galaxies, in the number of void regions and in the abundance of low rotational velocity galaxies in the Local Universe. By comparing these predictions with the most recent observations, strong constrains on the physical properties of the dark matter particles can be derived. We devote particular attention to the results from the Constrained Local UniversE Simulations (CLUES) project, a special set of simulations whose initial conditions are constrained by observational data from the Local Universe. The resulting simulations are designed to reproduce the observed structures in the nearby universe. The CLUES provides a numerical laboratory for simulating the Local Group of galaxies and exploring the physics of galaxy formation in an environment designed to follow the observed Local Universe. It has come of age as the numerical analogue of Near-Field Cosmology.

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arXiv2013

The halo mass function through the cosmic ages

In this paper we investigate how the halo mass function evolves with redshift, based on a suite of very large (with N_p = 3072^3 - 6000^3 particles) cosmological N-body simulations. Our halo catalogue data spans a redshift range of z = 0-30, allowing us to probe the mass function from the dark ages to the present. We utilise both the Friends-of-Friends (FOF) and Spherical Overdensity (SO) halofinding methods to directly compare the mass function derived using these commonly used halo definitions. The mass function from SO haloes exhibits a clear evolution with redshift, especially during the recent era of dark energy dominance (z < 1). We provide a redshift-parameterised fit for the SO mass function valid for the entire redshift range to within ~20% as well as a scheme to calculate the mass function for haloes with arbitrary overdensities. The FOF mass function displays a weaker evolution with redshift. We provide a `universal' fit for the FOF mass function, fitted to data across the entire redshift range simultaneously, and observe redshift evolution in our data versus this fit. The relative evolution of the mass functions derived via the two methods is compared and we find that the mass functions most closely match at z=0. The disparity at z=0 between the FOF and SO mass functions resides in their high mass tails where the collapsed fraction of mass in SO haloes is ~80% of that in FOF haloes. This difference grows with redshift so that, by z>20, the SO algorithm finds a ~50-80% lower collapsed fraction in high mass haloes than does the FOF algorithm, due in part to the significant over-linking effects known to affect the FOF method.

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arXiv2013

Halo Abundance Matching: accuracy and conditions for numerical convergence

Accurate predictions of the abundance and clustering of dark matter haloes play a key role in testing the standard cosmological model. Here, we investigate the accuracy of one of the leading methods of connecting the simulated dark matter haloes with observed galaxies -- the Halo Abundance Matching (HAM) technique. We show how to choose the optimal values of the mass and force resolution in large-volume N-body simulations so that they provide accurate estimates for correlation functions and circular velocities for haloes and their subhaloes -- crucial ingredients of the HAM method. At the 10% accuracy, results converge for 50 particles for haloes and 150 particles for progenitors subhaloes. In order to achieve this level of accuracy a number of conditions should be satisfied. The force resolution for the smallest resolved (sub)haloes should be in the range (0.1-0.3)rs, where rs is the scale radius of (sub)haloes. The number of particles for progenitors of subhaloes should be 150. We also demonstrate that the two-body scattering plays a minor role for the accuracy of N-body simulations thanks to the relatively small number of crossing-times of dark matter in haloes, and the limited force resolution of cosmological simulations.

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arXiv2013

Modelling Baryon Acoustic Oscillations with Perturbation Theory and Stochastic Halo Biasing

In this work we investigate the generation of mock halo catalogues based on perturbation theory and nonlinear stochastic biasing with the novel PATCHY-code. In particular, we use Augmented Lagrangian Perturbation Theory (ALPT) to generate a dark matter density field on a mesh starting from Gaussian fluctuations and to compute the peculiar velocity field. ALPT is based on a combination of second order LPT (2LPT) on large scales and the spherical collapse model on smaller scales. We account for the systematic deviation of perturbative approaches from N-body simulations together with halo biasing adopting an exponential bias model. We then account for stochastic biasing by defining three regimes: a low, an intermediate and a high density regime, using a Poisson distribution in the intermediate regime and the negative binomial distribution to model over-dispersion in the high density regime. Since we focus in this study on massive halos, we suppress the generation of halos in the low density regime. The various nonlinear and stochastic biasing parameters, and density thresholds (five) are calibrated with the large BigMultiDark N-body simulation to match the power spectrum of the corresponding halo population. Our mock catalogues show power spectra, both in real- and redshift-space, which are compatible with N-body simulations within about 2% up to k ~ 1 h Mpc^-1 at z = 0.577 for a sample of halos with the typical BOSS CMASS galaxy number density. The corresponding correlation functions are compatible down to a few Mpc. We also find that neglecting over-dispersion in high density regions produces power spectra with deviations of 10% at k ~ 0.4 h Mpc^-1. These results indicate the need to account for an accurate statistical description of the galaxy clustering for precise studies of large-scale surveys.

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arXiv2013

Vector dark energy and high-z massive clusters

The detection of extremely massive clusters at $z>1$ such as SPT-CL J0546-5345, SPT-CL J2106-5844, and XMMU J2235.3-2557 has been considered by some authors as a challenge to the standard \LCDM$\;$cosmology. In fact,assuming Gaussian initial conditions, the theoretical expectation of detecting such objects is as low as $\leq 1%$. In this \textit{Letter} we discuss the probability of the existence of such objects in the light of the Vector Dark Energy (VDE) paradigm, showing by means of a series of $N$-body simulations that chances of detection are substantially enhanced in this non-standard framework.

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arXiv2013

N-body simulations with a cosmic vector for dark energy

We present the results of a series of cosmological $N$-body simulations of a Vector Dark Energy (VDE) model, performed using a suitably modified version of the publicly available \texttt{GADGET}-2 code. The setups of our simulations were calibrated pursuing a twofold aim: 1) to analyze the large scale distribution of massive objects and 2) to determine the properties of halo structure in this different ramework.We observe that structure formation is enhanced in VDE, since the mass function at high redshift is boosted up to a factor of ten with respect to \LCDM, possibly alleviating tensions with the observations of massive clusters at high redshifts and early reionization epoch. Significant differences can also be found for the value of the growth factor, that in VDE shows a completely different behaviour, and in the distribution of voids, which in this cosmology are on average smaller and less abundant. We further studied the structure of dark matter haloes more massive than $5\times10^{13}$\hMsun, finding that no substantial difference emerges when comparing spin parameter, shape, triaxiality and profiles of structures evolved under different cosmological pictures. Nevertheless, minor differences can be found in the concentration-mass relation and the two point correlation function; both showing different amplitudes and steeper slopes.Using an additional series of simulations of a \LCDM\ scenario with the same $Ω_M$ and $σ_8$ used in the VDE cosmology, we have been able to establish whether the modifications induced in the new cosmological picture were due to the particular nature of the dynamical dark energy or a straightforward consequence of the cosmological parameters.

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arXiv2013

The MUSIC of Galaxy Clusters III: Properties, evolution and Y-M scaling relation of protoclusters of galaxies

In this work we study the properties of protoclusters of galaxies by employing the MUSIC set of hydrodynamical simulations, featuring a mass-limited sample of 282 resimulated clusters with available merger trees up to high redshift, and we trace the cluster formation back to $z$ = 1.5, 2.3 and 4. We study the features and redshift evolution of the mass and the spatial distribution for all the cluster progenitors and for the protoclusters, which we define as the most massive progenitors of the clusters identified at $z$ = 0. A natural extension to redshifts larger than 1 is applied to the estimate of the baryon content also in terms of gas and stars budgets: no remarkable variations with redshift are discovered. Furthermore, motivated by the proven potential of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich surveys to blindly search for faint distant objects, we focus on the scaling relation between total object mass and integrated Compton $y$-parameter, and we check for the possibility to extend the mass-observable paradigm to the protocluster regime, far beyond the redshift of 1, to account for the properties of the simulated objects. We find that the slope of this scaling law is steeper than what expected for a self-similarity assumption among these objects, and it increases with redshift mainly for the synthetic clusters where radiative processes, such as radiative cooling, heating processes of the gas due to UV background, star formation and supernovae feedback, are included. We use three different criteria to account for the dynamical state of the protoclusters, and find no significant dependence of the scaling parameters from the level of relaxation. Based on this, we exclude that the dynamical state is the cause of the observed deviations from self-similarity.

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arXiv2013

Cold versus Warm Dark Matter simulations of a galaxy group

The differences between cold (CDM) and warm (WDM) dark matter in the formation of a group of galaxies is examined by running two identical simulations where in the WDM case the initial power spectrum has been altered to mimic a 1keV dark matter particle. The CDM initial conditions were constrained to reproduce at z = 0 the correct local environment within which a "Local Group" (LG) of galaxies may form. Two significant differences between the two simulations are found. While in the CDM case a group of galaxies that resembles the real LG forms, the WDM run fails to reproduce a viable LG, instead forming a diffuse group which is still expanding at z = 0. This is surprising since, due to the suppression of small scale power in its power spectrum, WDM is naively expected to only affect the collapse of small haloes and not necessarily the dynamics on a scale of a group of galaxies. Furthermore the concentration of baryons in halo center's is greater in CDM than in WDM and the properties of the disks differ.

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