arXiv subjects

Oliver Hahn

Publications and source records attributed to Oliver Hahn.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Earth-mass haloes and the emergence of NFW density profiles

We simulate neutralino dark matter ($χ$DM) haloes from their initial collapse, at $\sim$ earth mass, up to a few percent solar. Our results confirm that the density profiles of the first haloes are described by a $\sim r^{-1.5}$ power-law. As haloes grow in mass, their density profiles evolve significantly. In the central regions, they become shallower and reach on average $\sim r^{-1}$, the asymptotic form of an NFW profile. Using non-cosmological controlled simulations, we observe that temporal variations in the gravitational potential caused by major mergers lead to a shallowing of the inner profile. This transformation is more significant for shallower initial profiles and for a higher number of merging systems. Depending on the merger details, the resulting profiles can be shallower or steeper than NFW in their inner regions. Interestingly, mergers have a much weaker effect when the profile is given by a broken power-law with an inner slope of $-1$ (such as NFW or Hernquist profiles). This offers an explanation for the emergence of NFW-like profiles: after their initial collapse, $r^{-1.5}$ $χ$DM haloes suffer copious major mergers, which progressively shallows the profile. Once an NFW-like profile is established, subsequent merging do not change the profile anymore. This suggests that halo profiles are not universal but rather a combination of (1) the physics of the formation of the microhaloes and (2) their early merger history -- both set by the properties of the dark matter particle -- as well as (3) the resilience of NFW-like profiles to perturbations.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Two is better than one: joint statistics of density and velocity in concentric spheres as a cosmological probe

The analytical formalism to obtain the probability distribution functions (PDFs) of spherically-averaged cosmic densities and velocity divergences in the mildly non-linear regime is presented. A large-deviation principle is applied to those cosmic fields assuming their most likely dynamics in spheres is set by the spherical collapse model. We validate our analytical results using state-of-the-art dark matter simulations with a phase-space resolved velocity field finding a 2% percent level agreement for a wide range of velocity divergences and densities in the mildly nonlinear regime (~10Mpc/h at redshift zero), usually inaccessible to perturbation theory. From the joint PDF of densities and velocity divergences measured in two concentric spheres, we extract with the same accuracy velocity profiles and conditional velocity PDF subject to a given over/under-density which are of interest to understand the non-linear evolution of velocity flows. Both PDFs are used to build a simple but accurate maximum likelihood estimators for the redshift evolution of the variance of both the density and velocity divergence fields, which have smaller relative errors than their sample variances when non-linearities appear. Given the dependence of the velocity divergence on the growth rate, there is a significant gain in using the full knowledge of both PDFs to derive constraints on the equation of state of dark energy. Thanks to the insensitivity of the velocity divergence to bias, its PDF can be used to obtain unbiased constraints on the growth of structures ($σ_8$,f) or it can be combined with the galaxy density PDF to extract bias parameters.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Tracing the cosmic web

The cosmic web is one of the most striking features of the distribution of galaxies and dark matter on the largest scales in the Universe. It is composed of dense regions packed full of galaxies, long filamentary bridges, flattened sheets and vast low density voids. The study of the cosmic web has focused primarily on the identification of such features, and on understanding the environmental effects on galaxy formation and halo assembly. As such, a variety of different methods have been devised to classify the cosmic web -- depending on the data at hand, be it numerical simulations, large sky surveys or other. In this paper we bring twelve of these methods together and apply them to the same data set in order to understand how they compare. In general these cosmic web classifiers have been designed with different cosmological goals in mind, and to study different questions. Therefore one would not {\it a priori} expect agreement between different techniques however, many of these methods do converge on the identification of specific features. In this paper we study the agreements and disparities of the different methods. For example, each method finds that knots inhabit higher density regions than filaments, etc. and that voids have the lowest densities. For a given web environment, we find substantial overlap in the density range assigned by each web classification scheme. We also compare classifications on a halo-by-halo basis; for example, we find that 9 of 12 methods classify around a third of group-mass haloes (i.e. $M_{\rm halo}\sim10^{13.5}h^{-1}M_{\odot}$) as being in filaments. Lastly, so that any future cosmic web classification scheme can be compared to the 12 methods used here, we have made all the data used in this paper public.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

Excursion set peaks: the role of shear

Recent analytical work on the modelling of dark halo abundances and clustering has demonstrated the advantages of combining the excursion set approach with peaks theory. We extend these ideas and introduce a model of excursion set peaks that incorporates the role of initial tidal effects or shear in determining the gravitational collapse of dark haloes. The model -- in which the critical density threshold for collapse depends on the tidal influences acting on protohaloes -- is well motivated from ellipsoidal collapse arguments and is also simple enough to be analytically tractable. We show that the predictions of this model are in very good agreement with measurements of the halo mass function and traditional scale dependent halo bias in N-body simulations across a wide range of masses and redshift. The presence of shear in the collapse threshold means that halo bias is naturally predicted to be nonlocal, and that protohalo densities at fixed mass are naturally predicted to have Lognormal-like distributions. We present the first direct estimate of Lagrangian nonlocal bias in N-body simulations, finding broad agreement with the model prediction. Finally, the simplicity of the model (which has essentially a single free parameter) opens the door to building efficient and accurate non-universal fitting functions of halo abundances and bias for use in precision cosmology.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

General relativistic 'screening' in cosmological simulations

We revisit the issue of interpreting the results of large volume cosmological simulations in the context of large scale general relativistic effects. We look for simple modifications to the nonlinear evolution of the gravitational potential $ψ$ that lead on large scales to the correct, fully relativistic description of density perturbations in the Newtonian gauge. We note that the relativistic constraint equation for $ψ$ can be cast as a diffusion equation, with a diffusion length scale determined by the expansion of the Universe. Exploiting the weak time evolution of $ψ$ in all regimes of interest, this equation can be further accurately approximated as a Helmholtz equation, with an effective relativistic 'screening' scale $\ell$ related to the Hubble radius. We demonstrate that it is thus possible to carry out N-body simulations in the Newtonian gauge by replacing Poisson's equation with this Helmholtz equation, involving a trivial change in the Green's function kernel. Our results also motivate a simple, approximate (but very accurate) gauge transformation - $δ_{\rm N}(\mathbf{k}) \approx δ_{\rm sim}(\mathbf{k})\times (k^2+\ell^{-2})/k^2$ - to convert the density field $δ_{\rm sim}$ of standard collisionless N-body simulations (initialised in the comoving synchronous gauge) into the Newtonian gauge density $δ_{\rm N}$ at arbitrary times. A similar conversion can also be written in terms of particle positions. Our results can be interpreted in terms of a Jeans stability criterion induced by the expansion of the Universe. The appearance of the screening scale $\ell$ in the evolution of $ψ$, in particular, leads to a natural resolution of the 'Jeans swindle' in the presence of super-horizon modes.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2016

RHAPSODY-G simulations II - Baryonic growth and metal enrichment in massive galaxy clusters

We study the evolution of the stellar component and the metallicity of both the intracluster medium and of stars in massive ($M_{\rm vir}\approx 6\times 10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}/h$) simulated galaxy clusters from the Rhapsody-G suite in detail and compare them to observational results. The simulations were performed with the AMR code RAMSES and include the effect of AGN feedback at the sub-grid level. AGN feedback is required to produce realistic galaxy and cluster properties and plays a role in mixing material in the central regions and regulating star formation in the central galaxy. In both our low and high resolution runs with fiducial stellar yields, we find that stellar and ICM metallicities are a factor of two lower than in observations. We find that cool core clusters exhibit steeper metallicity gradients than non-cool core clusters, in qualitative agreement with observations. We verify that the ICM metallicities measured in the simulation can be explained by a simple "regulator" model in which the metallicity is set by a balance of stellar yield and gas accretion. It is plausible that a combination of higher resolution and higher metal yield in AMR simulation would allow the metallicity of simulated clusters to match observed values; however this hypothesis needs to be tested with future simulations. Comparison to recent literature highlights that results concerning the metallicity of clusters and cluster galaxies might depend sensitively on the scheme chosen to solve the hydrodynamics.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2015

An adaptively refined phase-space element method for cosmological simulations and collisionless dynamics

N-body simulations are essential for understanding the formation and evolution of structure in the Universe. However, the discrete nature of these simulations affects their accuracy when modelling collisionless systems. We introduce a new approach to simulate the gravitational evolution of cold collisionless fluids by solving the Vlasov-Poisson equations in terms of adaptively refineable "Lagrangian phase space elements". These geometrical elements are piecewise smooth maps between Lagrangian space and Eulerian phase space and approximate the continuum structure of the distribution function. They allow for dynamical adaptive splitting to accurately follow the evolution even in regions of very strong mixing. We discuss in detail various one-, two- and three-dimensional test problems to demonstrate the performance of our method. Its advantages compared to N-body algorithms are: i) explicit tracking of the fine-grained distribution function, ii) natural representation of caustics, iii) intrinsically smooth gravitational potential fields, thus iv) eliminating the need for any type of ad-hoc force softening. We show the potential of our method by simulating structure formation in a warm dark matter scenario. We discuss how spurious collisionality and large-scale discreteness noise of N-body methods are both strongly suppressed, which eliminates the artificial fragmentation of filaments. Therefore, we argue that our new approach improves on the N-body method when simulating self-gravitating cold and collisionless fluids, and is the first method that allows to explicitly follow the fine-grained evolution in six-dimensional phase space.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

The Properties of Cosmic Velocity Fields

Understanding the velocity field is very important for modern cosmology: it gives insights to structure formation in general, and also its properties are crucial ingredients in modelling redshift-space distortions and in interpreting measurements of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. Unfortunately, characterising the velocity field in cosmological N-body simulations is inherently complicated by two facts: i) The velocity field becomes manifestly multi-valued after shell-crossing and has discontinuities at caustics. This is due to the collisionless nature of dark matter. ii) N-body simulations sample the velocity field only at a set of discrete locations, with poor resolution in low-density regions. In this paper, we discuss how the associated problems can be circumvented by using a phase-space interpolation technique. This method provides extremely accurate estimates of the cosmic velocity fields and its derivatives, which can be properly defined without the need of the arbitrary "coarse-graining" procedure commonly used. We explore in detail the configuration-space properties of the cosmic velocity field on very large scales and in the highly nonlinear regime. In particular, we characterise the divergence and curl of the velocity field, present their one-point statistics, analyse the Fourier-space properties and provide fitting formulae for the velocity divergence bias relative to the non-linear matter power spectrum. We furthermore contrast some of the interesting differences in the velocity fields of warm and cold dark matter models. We anticipate that the high-precision measurements carried out here will help to understand in detail the dynamics of dark matter and the structures it forms.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Rhapsody-G simulations I: the cool cores, hot gas and stellar content of massive galaxy clusters

We present the Rhapsody-G suite of cosmological hydrodynamic AMR zoom simulations of ten massive galaxy clusters at the $M_{\rm vir}\sim10^{15}\,{\rm M}_\odot$ scale. These simulations include cooling and sub-resolution models for star formation and stellar and supermassive black hole feedback. The sample is selected to capture the whole gamut of assembly histories that produce clusters of similar final mass. We present an overview of the successes and shortcomings of such simulations in reproducing both the stellar properties of galaxies as well as properties of the hot plasma in clusters. In our simulations, a long-lived cool-core/non-cool core dichotomy arises naturally, and the emergence of non-cool cores is related to low angular momentum major mergers. Nevertheless, the cool-core clusters exhibit a low central entropy compared to observations, which cannot be alleviated by thermal AGN feedback. For cluster scaling relations we find that the simulations match well the $M_{500}-Y_{500}$ scaling of Planck SZ clusters but deviate somewhat from the observed X-ray luminosity and temperature scaling relations in the sense of being slightly too bright and too cool at fixed mass, respectively. Stars are produced at an efficiency consistent with abundance matching constraints and central galaxies have star formation rates consistent with recent observations. While our simulations thus match various key properties remarkably well, we conclude that the shortcomings strongly suggest an important role for non-thermal processes (through feedback or otherwise) or thermal conduction in shaping the intra-cluster medium.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Rhapsody-G simulations: galaxy clusters as baryonic closed boxes and the covariance between hot gas and galaxies

Within a sufficiently large cosmic volume, conservation of baryons implies a simple `closed box' view in which the sum of the baryonic components must equal a constant fraction of the total enclosed mass. We present evidence from Rhapsody-G hydrodynamic simulations of massive galaxy clusters that the closed-box expectation may hold to a surprising degree within the interior, non-linear regions of haloes. At a fixed halo mass, we find a significant anti-correlation between hot gas mass fraction and galaxy mass fraction (cold gas + stars), with a rank correlation coefficient of -0.69 within $R_{500c}$. Because of this anti-correlation, the total baryon mass serves as a low-scatter proxy for total cluster mass. The fractional scatter of total baryon fraction scales approximately as $0.02 (Δ_c/100)^{0.6}$, while the scatter of either gas mass or stellar mass is larger in magnitude and declines more slowly with increasing radius. We discuss potential observational tests using cluster samples selected by optical and hot gas properties; the simulations suggest that joint selection on stellar and hot gas has potential to achieve 5% scatter in total halo mass.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

Four phases of angular-momentum buildup in high-z galaxies: from cosmic-web streams through an extended ring to disc and bulge

We study the angular-momentum (AM) buildup in high-$z$ massive galaxies using high-resolution cosmological simulations. The AM originates in co-planar streams of cold gas and merging galaxies tracing cosmic-web filaments, and it undergoes four phases of evolution. (I) Outside the halo virial radius ($R_{\rm v}\!\sim\!100\,{\rm kpc}$), the elongated streams gain AM by tidal torques with a specific AM (sAM) $\sim\!1.7$ times the dark-matter (DM) spin due to the gas' higher quadrupole moment. This AM is expressed as stream impact parameters, from $\sim\!0.3R_{\rm v}$ to counter rotation. (II) In the outer halo, while the incoming DM mixes with the existing halo of lower sAM to a spin $λ_{\rm dm}\!\sim\!0.04$, the cold streams transport the AM to the inner halo such that their spin in the halo is $\sim\!3λ_{\rm dm}$. (III) Near pericenter, the streams dissipate into an irregular rotating ring extending to $\sim\!0.3R_{\rm v}$ and tilted relative to the inner disc. Torques exerted partly by the disc make the ring gas lose AM, spiral in, and settle into the disc within one orbit. The ring is observable with 30\% probability as a damped Lyman-$α$ absorber. (IV) Within the disc, $<\!0.1R_{\rm v}$, torques associated with violent disc instability drive AM out and baryons into a central bulge, while outflows remove low-spin gas, introducing certain sensitivity to feedback strength. Despite the different AM histories of gas and DM, the disc spin is comparable to the DM-halo spin. Counter rotation can strongly affect disc evolution.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2014

Collisionless Dynamics and the Cosmic Web

I review the nature of three-dimensional collapse in the Zeldovich approximation, how it relates to the underlying nature of the three-dimensional Lagrangian manifold and naturally gives rise to a hierarchical structure formation scenario that progresses through collapse from voids to pancakes, filaments and then halos. I then discuss how variations of the Zeldovich approximation (based on the gravitational or the velocity potential) have been used to define classifications of the cosmic large-scale structure into dynamically distinct parts. Finally, I turn to recent efforts to devise new approaches relying on tessellations of the Lagrangian manifold to follow the fine-grained dynamics of the dark matter fluid into the highly non-linear regime and both extract the maximum amount of information from existing simulations as well as devise new simulation techniques for cold collisionless dynamics.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

The AGORA High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project

We introduce the AGORA project, a comprehensive numerical study of well-resolved galaxies within the LCDM cosmology. Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with force resolutions of ~100 proper pc or better will be run with a variety of code platforms to follow the hierarchical growth, star formation history, morphological transformation, and the cycle of baryons in and out of 8 galaxies with halo masses M_vir ~= 1e10, 1e11, 1e12, and 1e13 Msun at z=0 and two different ("violent" and "quiescent") assembly histories. The numerical techniques and implementations used in this project include the smoothed particle hydrodynamics codes GADGET and GASOLINE, and the adaptive mesh refinement codes ART, ENZO, and RAMSES. The codes will share common initial conditions and common astrophysics packages including UV background, metal-dependent radiative cooling, metal and energy yields of supernovae, and stellar initial mass function. These are described in detail in the present paper. Subgrid star formation and feedback prescriptions will be tuned to provide a realistic interstellar and circumgalactic medium using a non-cosmological disk galaxy simulation. Cosmological runs will be systematically compared with each other using a common analysis toolkit, and validated against observations to verify that the solutions are robust - i.e., that the astrophysical assumptions are responsible for any success, rather than artifacts of particular implementations. The goals of the AGORA project are, broadly speaking, to raise the realism and predictive power of galaxy simulations and the understanding of the feedback processes that regulate galaxy "metabolism." The proof-of-concept dark matter-only test of the formation of a galactic halo with a z=0 mass of M_vir ~= 1.7e11 Msun by 9 different versions of the participating codes is also presented to validate the infrastructure of the project.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2013

The locations of halo formation and the peaks formalism

We investigate the problem of predicting the halo mass function from the properties of the Lagrangian density field. We focus on a perturbation spectrum with a small-scale cut-off (as in warm dark matter cosmologies). This cut-off results in a strong suppression of low mass objects, providing additional leverage to rigorously test which perturbations collapse and to what mass. We find that all haloes are consistent with forming near peaks of the initial density field, with a strong correlation between proto-halo density and ellipticity. We demonstrate that, while standard excursion set theory with correlated steps completely fails to reproduce the mass function, the inclusion of the peaks constraint leads to the correct number of haloes but significantly underpredicts the masses of low-mass objects (with the predicted halo mass function at low masses behaving like dn/dln m ~ m^{2/3}). This prediction is very robust and cannot be easily altered within the framework of a single collapse barrier. The nature of collapse in the presence of a small-scale cut-off thus reveals that excursion set calculations require a more detailed understanding of the collapse-time of a general ellipsoidal perturbation to predict the ultimate collapsed mass of a peak -- a problem that has been hidden in the large abundance of small-scale structure in CDM. We demonstrate how this problem can be resolved within the excursion set framework.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

How to Zoom: Bias, Contamination, and Lagrange Volumes in Multimass Cosmological Simulations

We perform a suite of multimass cosmological zoom simulations of individual dark matter halos and explore how to best select Lagrangian regions for resimulation without contaminating the halo of interest with low-resolution particles. Such contamination can lead to significant errors in the gas distribution of hydrodynamical simulations, as we show. For a fixed Lagrange volume, we find that the chance of contamination increases systematically with the level of zoom. In order to avoid contamination, the Lagrangian volume selected for resimulation must increase monotonically with the resolution difference between parent box and the zoom region. We provide a simple formula for selecting Lagrangian regions (in units of the halo virial volume) as a function of the level of zoom required. We also explore the degree to which a halo's Lagrangian volume correlates with other halo properties (concentration, spin, formation time, shape, etc.) and find no significant correlation. There is a mild correlation between Lagrange volume and environment, such that halos living in the most clustered regions have larger Lagrangian volumes. Nevertheless, selecting halos to be isolated is not the best way to ensure inexpensive zoom simulations. We explain how one can safely choose halos with the smallest Lagrangian volumes, which are the least expensive to resimulate, without biasing one's sample.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

Mergers and Mass Accretion for Infalling Halos Both End Well Outside Cluster Virial Radii

We find that infalling dark matter halos (i.e., the progenitors of satellite halos) begin losing mass well outside the virial radius of their eventual host halos. The peak mass occurs at a range of clustercentric distances, with median and 68th percentile range of 1.8 +2.3/-1.0 R_(vir,host) for progenitors of z=0 satellites. The peak circular velocity for infalling halos occurs at significantly larger distances (3.7 +3.3/-2.2 R_(vir,host) at z=0). This difference arises because different physical processes set peak circular velocity (typically, ~1:5 and larger mergers which cause transient circular velocity spikes) and peak mass (typically, smooth accretion) for infalling halos. We find that infalling halos also stop having significant mergers well before they enter the virial radius of their eventual hosts. Mergers larger than a 1:40 ratio in halo mass end for infalling halos at similar clustercentric distances (~ 1.9 R_(vir,host)) as the end of overall mass accretion. However, mergers larger than 1:3 typically end for infalling halos at more than 4 virial radial away from their eventual hosts. This limits the ability of mergers to affect quenching and morphology changes in clusters. We also note that the transient spikes which set peak circular velocity may lead to issues with abundance matching on that parameter, including unphysical galaxy stellar mass growth profiles near clusters; we propose a simple observational test to check if a better halo proxy for galaxy stellar mass exists.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

How closely do baryons follow dark matter on large scales?

We investigate the large-scale clustering and gravitational interaction of baryons and dark matter (DM) over cosmic time using a set of collisionless N-body simulations. Both components, baryons and DM, are evolved from distinct primordial density and velocity power spectra as predicted by early-universe physics. We first demonstrate that such two-component simulations require an unconventional match between force and mass resolution (i.e. force softening on at least the mean particle separation scale). Otherwise, the growth on any scale is not correctly recovered because of a spurious coupling between the two species at the smallest scales. With these simulations, we then demonstrate how the primordial differences in the clustering of baryons and DM are progressively diminished over time. In particular, we explicitly show how the BAO signature is damped in the spatial distribution of baryons and imprinted in that of DM. This is a rapid process, yet it is still not fully completed at low redshifts. On large scales, the overall shape of the correlation function of baryons and DM differs by 2% at z = 9 and by 0.2% at z = 0. The differences in the amplitude of the BAO peak are approximately a factor of 5 larger: 10% at z = 9 and 1% at z = 0. These discrepancies are, however, smaller than effects expected to be introduced by galaxy formation physics in both the shape of the power spectrum and in the BAO peak, and are thus unlikely to be detected given the precision of the next generation of galaxy surveys. Hence, our results validate the standard practice of modelling the observed galaxy distribution using predictions for the total mass clustering in the Universe.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2013

The Warm DM halo mass function below the cut-off scale

Warm Dark Matter (WDM) cosmologies are a viable alternative to the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) scenario. Unfortunately, an accurate scrutiny of the WDM predictions with N-body simulations has proven difficult due to numerical artefacts. Here, we report on cosmological simulations that, for the first time, are devoid of those problems, and thus, are able to accurately resolve the WDM halo mass function well below the cut-off. We discover a complex picture, with perturbations at different evolutionary stages populating different ranges in the halo mass function. On the smallest mass scales we can resolve, identified objects are typically centres of filaments that are starting to collapse. On intermediate mass scales, objects typically correspond to fluctuations that have collapsed and are in the process of relaxation, whereas the high mass end is dominated by objects similar to haloes identified in CDM simulations. We then explicitly show how the formation of low-mass haloes is suppressed, which translates into a strong cut-off in the halo mass function. This disfavours some analytic formulations that predict a halo mass function that would extend well below the free streaming mass. We argue for a more detailed exploration of the formation of the smallest structures expected to form in a given cosmology, which, we foresee, will advance our overall understanding of structure formation.

astro-ph.CO↗