arXiv subjects

R. Teyssier

Publications and source records attributed to R. Teyssier.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2008

Antimatter cosmic rays from dark matter annihilation: First results from an N-body experiment

[Abridged]. We take advantage of the galaxy-like 3D dark matter map extracted from the HORIZON Project results to calculate the positron and antiproton fluxes from dark matter annihilation, in a model-independent approach as well as for dark matter particle benchmarks relevant at the LHC scale (from supersymmetric and extra-dimensional theories). Such a study is dedicated to a better estimate of the theoretical uncertainties affecting predictions, while the PAMELA and GLAST satellites are currently taking data which will soon provide better observational constraints. We discuss the predictions of the antiproton and positron fluxes, and of the positron fraction as well, as compared to the current data. We finally discuss the limits of the Nbody framework in describing the dark matter halo of our Galaxy.

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arXiv2008

Bimodal gas accretion in the Horizon-MareNostrum galaxy formation simulation

(abridged) The physics of diffuse gas accretion and the properties of the cold and hot modes of accretion onto proto-galaxies between z=2 and z=5.4 is investigated using the large cosmological simulation performed with the RAMSES code on the MareNostrum supercomputing facility. Galactic winds, chemical enrichment, UV background heating and radiative cooling are taken into account in this very high resolution simulation. Using accretion--weighted temperature histograms, we have perfomed two different measurements of the thermal state of the gas accreted towards the central galaxy. The first measurement, performed using accretion--weighted histograms on a spherical surface of radius 0.2 Rvir centred on the densest gas structure near the halo centre of mass, is a good indicator of the presence of an accretion shock in the vicinity of the galactic disc. We define the hot shock mass, Mshock, as the typical halo mass separating cold dominated from hot dominated accretion in the vicinity of the galaxy. The second measurement is performed by radially averaging histograms between 0.2 Rvir and Rvir, in order to detect radially extended structures such as gas filaments: this is a good proxy for detecting cold streams feeding the central galaxy. We define Mstream as the transition mass separating cold dominated from hot dominated accretion in the outer halo, marking the disappearance of these cold streams. We find a hot shock transition mass of Mshock=10^{11.6} Msun (dark matter), with no significant evolution with redshift. Conversely, we find that Mstream increases sharply with z. Our measurements are in agreement with the analytical predictions of Birnboim & Dekel (2003) and Dekel & Birnboim (2006), if we correct their model by assuming low metallicity (< 10^{-3} Zsun) for the filaments, correspondingly to our measurements.

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arXiv2008

Gamma ray and Neutrino fluxes from a cosmological dark matter simulation

In this paper, we estimate the gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes coming from dark matter annihilation in a Milky Way framework provided by a recent N-BODY HORIZON simulation. We first study the characteristics of the simulation and highlight the mass distribution within the galactic halo. The general dark matter density has a typical $r^{-3}$ power law for large radii, but the inner behaviour is poorly constrained below the resolution of the simulation ($\sim 200$ pc). We identify clumps and subclumps and analyze their distribution, as well as their internal structure. Inside the clumps, the power law is rather universal, $r^{-2.5}$ in the outer part with again strong uncertainties for smaller radii, especially for light clumps. We show a full-sky map of the astrophysical contribution to the gamma-ray or neutrino fluxes in this N-body framework. Using quite model independent and general assumptions for the high energy physics part, we evaluate the possible absolute fluxes and show some benchmark regions for the experiments GLAST, EGRET, and a km3 size extension of ANTARES like the KM3NeT project. While individual clumps seem to be beyond detection reach, the galactic center region is promising and GLAST could be sensitive to the geometry and the structure of its dark matter distribution. The detection by a km3 version of ANTARES is, however, more challenging due to a higher energy threshold. We also point out that the lack of resolution leaves the inner structure of subhalos poorly constrained. Using the same clump spectrum and mass fraction, a clump luminosity boost of order ten can be achieved with a steeper profile in the inner part of the sub-halos.

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arXiv2008

The dynamical state of A548 from XMM-Newton data: X-ray and radio connection

We present a detailed study of the X-ray properties of the galaxy cluster Abell 548b (z=0.04), using XMM-Newton data, and discuss the connection between the thermal properties and the presence of two extended relic radio sources located at the cluster periphery. We wish to analyze the dynamical state of the cluster and confirm the presence of a major merger. We will discuss the merger effects on the extended nonthermal emission. From the analysis of the temperature distribution and of the surface brightness profiles, we find evidence of a shock in the northern cluster region, just before the location of the two extended peripheral relics. From the optical analysis, we find that the cluster galaxies show a large $σ_V$, and two components are needed to fit their velocity distribution. Observational results were compared with a cluster simulation. The maps of gas temperature and density distribution from the simulation agree with the observational data in the case of a cluster merger nearly perpendicular to the plane of the sky and in the state after the maximum core collapse. We conclude that we are observing a galaxy cluster in a major merger phase, just after the maximum core collapse. The mass ratio is about 1:2, and the merger collision is nearly perpendicular to the plane of the sky. A shock is present in the northern cluster region, and it is very likely responsible for the electron reacceleration and the magnetic field amplification that will give cause the cluster relics. The relative position of the shock and the relics is strongly affected by projection effects.

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arXiv2008

Initial Conditions for Large Cosmological Simulations

This technical paper describes a software package that was designed to produce initial conditions for large cosmological simulations in the context of the Horizon collaboration. These tools generalize E. Bertschinger's Grafic1 software to distributed parallel architectures and offer a flexible alternative to the Grafic2 software for ``zoom'' initial conditions, at the price of large cumulated cpu and memory usage. The codes have been validated up to resolutions of 4096^3 and were used to generate the initial conditions of large hydrodynamical and dark matter simulations. They also provide means to generate constrained realisations for the purpose of generating initial conditions compatible with, e.g. the local group, or the SDSS catalog.

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arXiv2008

Cosmological MHD simulation of a cooling flow cluster

Various observations of magnetic fields in the Intra-Cluster Medium (ICM), most of the time restricted to cluster cores, point towards field strength of the order of a few microG (synchrotron radiation from radio relics and radio halos, inverse Compton radiation in X-rays and Faraday rotation measure of polarised background sources). Both the origin and the spatial structure of galaxy clusters magnetic fields are still under debate. In particular, the radial profile of the magnetic field, from the core of clusters to their outskirts, is of great importance for cosmic rays propagation within the Cosmic Web. In this letter, we highlight the importance of cooling processes in amplifying the magnetic field in the core of galaxy clusters up to one order of magnitude above the typical amplification obtained for a pure adiabatic evolution. We have performed a "zoom'' cosmological simulation of a 3 keV cluster, including dark matter and gas dynamics, atomic cooling, UV heating and star formation using the newly developed MHD solver in the AMR code RAMSES. Magnetic field amplification proceeds mainly through gravitational contraction. Shearing motions due to turbulence provide additional amplification in the outskirts of the cluster, while magnetic reconnection during mergers causes magnetic field dissipation in the core. Cooling processes have a strong impact on the magnetic field structure in the cluster. First, due to the sharp rise of the gas density in the centre, gravitational amplification is significantly amplified, when compared to the non--radiative run. Second, due to cooling processes, shearing motions are much stronger in the core than in the adiabatic case, leading to additional field amplification and no significant magnetic reconnection.

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arXiv2007

The distant galaxy cluster CL0016+16: X-ray analysis up to $R_{200}$

To study the mass distribution of galaxy clusters up to their Virial radius, CL0016+16 seems to be a good candidate,since it is a bright massive cluster, previously considered as being dynamically relaxed. Using XMM-Newton observations of CL0016+16, we performed a careful X-ray background analysis, and we detected convincingly its X-ray emission up to $R_{200}$. We then studied its dynamical state with a detailed 2D temperature and surface brightness analysis of the inner part of the cluster. Using the assumption of both spherical symmetry and hydrostatic equilibrium (HE) we can determine the main cluster parameters: total mass, temperature profile, surface brightness profile and $β$-parameter. We also build a temperature map which clearly exhibits departure from spherical symmetry in the centre. To estimate the influence of these perturbations onto our total mass estimate, we also compute the total mass in the framework of the HE approach, but this time with various temperature profiles obtained in different directions. These various total mass estimates are consistent with each other. The temperature perturbations are clear signatures of ongoing merger activity. We also find significant residuals after subtracting the emissivity map by a 2D $β$-model fit. We conclude that, although CL0016+16 shows clear signs of merger activity and departure from spherical symmetry in the centre, its X-ray emissivity can be detected up to $R_{200}$ and the corresponding mass $M_{200}$ can be computed directly. It is therefore a good candidate to study cosmological scaling laws as predicted by the theory.

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arXiv2007

Magnetic processes in a collapsing dense core. II Fragmentation. Is there a fragmentation crisis ?

Abridged. A large fraction of stars are found in binary systems. It is therefore important for our understanding of the star formation process, to investigate the fragmentation of dense molecular cores. We study the influence of the magnetic field, ideally coupled to the gas, on the fragmentation in multiple systems of collapsing cores. We present high resolution numerical simulations performed with the RAMSES MHD code starting with a uniform sphere in solid body rotation and a uniform magnetic field parallel to the rotation axis. We pay particular attention to the strength of the magnetic field and interpret the results using the analysis presented in a companion paper. The results depend much on the amplitude, $A$, of the perturbations seeded initially. For a low amplitude, $A=0.1$, we find that for values of the mass-to-flux over critical mass-to-flux ratio, $μ$, as high as $μ= 20$, the centrifugally supported disk which fragments in the hydrodynamical case, is stabilized and remains axisymmetric. Detailed investigations reveals that this is due to the rapid growth of the toroidal magnetic field induced by the differential motions within the disk. For values of $μ$ smaller $\simeq 5$, corresponding to larger magnetic intensities, there is no centrifugally supported disk because of magnetic braking. When the amplitude of the perturbation is equal to $A=0.5$, each initial peak develops independently and the core fragments for a large range of $μ$. Only for values of $μ$ close to 1 is the magnetic field able to prevent the fragmentation. Since a large fraction of stars are binaries, the results of low magnetic intensities preventing the fragmentation in case of weak perturbations, is problematic. We discuss three possible mechanisms...

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arXiv2007

Numerical methods comparison for protostellar collapse calculations

The development of parallel supercomputers allows today the detailed study of the collapse and the fragmentation of prestellar cores with increasingly accurate numerical simulations. Thanks to the advances in sub-millimeter observations, a wide range of observed initial conditions enable us to study the different modes of low-mass star formation. The challenge for the simulations is to reproduce the observational results. Two main numerical methods, namely AMR and SPH, are widely used to simulate the collapse and the fragmentation of prestellar cores. We compare here thoroughly these two methods with numerical resolution requirements deduced from previous studies. Our physical model is as simple as possible, and consists of an isothermal sphere rotating around the z-axis. We first study the conservation of angular momentum as a function of the resolution. Then, we explore a wide range of simulation parameters to study the fragmentation of prestellar cores. There seems to be a convergence between the two methods, provided resolution in each case is sufficient. Resolution criteria adapted to our physical cases, in terms of resolution per Jeans mass, for an accurate description of the formation of protostellar cores are deduced from the present study. This convergence is encouraging for future work in simulations of low-mass star formation, providing the aforementioned criteria are fulfilled.

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arXiv2006

AGN self-regulation in cooling flow clusters

We use three-dimensional high-resolution adaptive-mesh-refinement simulations to investigate if mechanical feedback from active galactic nucleus jets can halt a massive cooling flow in a galaxy cluster and give rise to a self-regulated accretion cycle. We start with a 3 x 10^9MSun black hole at the centre of a spherical halo with the mass of the Virgo cluster. Initially, all the baryons are in a hot intracluster medium in hydrostatic equilibrium within the dark matter's gravitational potential. The black hole accretes the surrounding gas at the Bondi rate and a fraction of the accretion power is returned into the intracluster medium mechanically through the production of jets. The accretion, initially slow (~0.0002MSun/yr), becomes catastrophic, as the gas cools and condenses in the dark matter's potential. Therefore, it cannot prevent the cooling catastrophe at the centre of the cluster. However, after this rapid phase, where the accretion rate reaches a peak of ~0.2MSun/yr, the cavities inflated by the jets become highly turbulent. The turbulent mixing of the shock-heated gas with the rest of the intracluster medium puts a quick end to this short-lived rapid-growth phase. After dropping by almost two orders of magnitudes, the black hole accretion rate stabilises at ~0.006MSun/yr, without significant variations for several billions of years, indicating that a self-regulated steady-state has been reached. This accretion rate corresponds to a negligible increase of the black hole mass over the age of the Universe, but is sufficient to create a quasi-equilibrium state in the cluster core.

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arXiv2006

Cosmological Simulations using Grid Middleware

One way to access the aggregated power of a collection of heterogeneous machines is to use a grid middleware, such as DIET, GridSolve or NINF. It addresses the problem of monitoring the resources, of handling the submissions of jobs and as an example the inherent transfer of input and output data, in place of the user. In this paper we present how to run cosmological simulations using the RAMSES application along with the DIET middleware. We will describe how to write the corresponding DIET client and server. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the DIET middleware. Section 3 describes the RAMSES cosmological software and simulations, and how to interface it with DIET. We show how to write a client and a server in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 presents the experiments realized on Grid'5000, the French Research Grid, and we conclude in Section 6.

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arXiv2006

A High Order Godunov Scheme with Constrained Transport and Adaptive Mesh Refinement for Astrophysical MHD

In this paper, we present a new method to perform numerical simulations of astrophysical MHD flows using the Adaptive Mesh Refinement framework and Constrained Transport. The algorithm is based on a previous work in which the MUSCL--Hancock scheme was used to evolve the induction equation. In this paper, we detail the extension of this scheme to the full MHD equations and discuss its properties. Through a series of test problems, we illustrate the performances of this new code using two different MHD Riemann solvers (Lax-Friedrich and Roe) and the need of the Adaptive Mesh Refinement capabilities in some cases. Finally, we show its versatility by applying it to two completely different astrophysical situations well studied in the past years: the growth of the magnetorotational instability in the shearing box and the collapse of magnetized cloud cores. We have implemented this new Godunov scheme to solve the ideal MHD equations in the AMR code RAMSES. It results in a powerful tool that can be applied to a great variety of astrophysical problems, ranging from galaxies formation in the early universe to high resolution studies of molecular cloud collapse in our galaxy.

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arXiv2006

Transverse and longitudinal correlation functions in the Intergalactic Medium from 32 close pairs of high-redshift quasars

We present the transverse flux correlation function of the Lyman-alpha forest in quasar absorption spectra at z~2.1 from VLT-FORS and VLT-UVES observations of a total of 32 pairs of quasars; 26 pairs with separations in the range 0.6<theta<4 arcmin and 6 pairs with 4<theta<10 arcmin. Correlation is detected at the 3sigma level up to separations of the order of ~4 arcmin (or ~4.4 h^{-1} Mpc comoving at z=2.1 for Omega_{m}=0.3 and Omega_{Lambda}=0.7). We have, furthermore, measured the longitudinal correlation function at a somewhat higher mean redshift (z=2.39) from 20 lines of sight observed with high spectral resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio with VLT-UVES. We compare the observed transverse and longitudinal correlation functions to that obtained from numerical simulations and illustrate the effect of spectral resolution, thermal broadening and peculiar motions. The shape and correlation length of the correlation functions are in good agreement with those expected from absorption by the filamentary and sheet-like structures in the photoionized warm intergalactic medium predicted in CDM-like models for structures formation. Using a sample of 139 C_{iv} systems detected along the lines of sight toward the pairs of quasars we also investigate the transverse correlation of metals on the same scales. The observed transverse correlation function of intervening C_{iv} absorption systems is consistent with that of a randomly distributed population of absorbers. This is likely due to the small number of pairs with separation less than 2 arcmin. We detect, however, a significant overdensity of systems in the sightlines towards the quartet Q0103-294A&B, Q0102-2931 and Q0102-293 which extends over the redshift range 1.5<z<2.2 and an angular scale larger than 10 arcmin.

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arXiv2006

Archeops In-flight Performance, Data Processing and Map Making

Archeops is a balloon--borne experiment widely inspired by the Planck satellite and by its High Frequency Instrument (HFI). It is mainly dedicated to measure the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropies at high angular resolution (about 12 arcminutes) over a large fraction of the sky (around 30 %) in the millimetre and submillimetre range at 143, 217, 353 and 545 GHz. Further, the Archeops 353 GHz channel consists of three pairs of polarized sensitive bolometers designed to detect the polarized diffuse emission of Galactic dust. We present in this paper the update of the instrumental setup as well as the inflight performance for the last Archeops flight campaign in February 2002 from Kiruna (Sweden). We also describe the processing and analysis of the Archeops time ordered data for that campaign which lead to the measurement of the CMB anisotropies power spectrum in the multipole range l=10-700 (Benoit et al. 2003a, Tristram et al. 2005) and to the first measurement of the dust polarized emission at large angular scales and its polarized. We present maps of 30 % of the sky of the Galactic emission, including the Galactic plane, in the four Archeops channels at 143, 217, 353 and 545 GHz and maps of the CMB anisotropies at 143 and 217 GHz. These are the firstever available sub--degree resolution maps in the millimetre and submillimetre range of the large angular-scales Galactic dust diffuse emission and CMB temperature anisotropies respectively.

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arXiv2006

Kinematic Dynamos using Constrained Transport with High Order Godunov Schemes and Adaptive Mesh Refinement

We propose to extend the well-known MUSCL-Hancock scheme for Euler equations to the induction equation modeling the magnetic field evolution in kinematic dynamo problems. The scheme is based on an integral form of the underlying conservation law which, in our formulation, results in a ``finite-surface'' scheme for the induction equation. This naturally leads to the well-known ``constrained transport'' method, with additional continuity requirement on the magnetic field representation. The second ingredient in the MUSCL scheme is the predictor step that ensures second order accuracy both in space and time. We explore specific constraints that the mathematical properties of the induction equations place on this predictor step, showing that three possible variants can be considered. We show that the most aggressive formulations (referred to as C-MUSCL and U-MUSCL) reach the same level of accuracy as the other one (referred to as Runge-Kutta), at a lower computational cost. More interestingly, these two schemes are compatible with the Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) framework. It has been implemented in the AMR code RAMSES. It offers a novel and efficient implementation of a second order scheme for the induction equation. We have tested it by solving two kinematic dynamo problems in the low diffusion limit. The construction of this scheme for the induction equation constitutes a step towards solving the full MHD set of equations using an extension of our current methodology.

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arXiv2005

The correlation of the Lyman-alpha forest and metals in close pairs of hight-redshift quasars

We derive the transverse flux correlation function in the Lyman-alpha forest at z~2.1 from VLT-FORS observations of a total of 32 pairs of quasars. The shape and correlation length of the transverse correlation function are in good agreement with the paradigm of intergalactic medium predicted in CDM-like models for structures formation. Using a sample of 139 Civ systems detected along the lines of sight toward the pairs of quasars we investigate the transverse correlation of metals on the same scales. We find that the correlation function is consistent with that of a randomly distributed population of Civ systems. However, we detect an important overdensity of systems in front of a quartet.

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arXiv2005

Comparison of map-making algorithms for CMB experiments

We have compared the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropy maps made from one-year time ordered data (TOD) streams that simulated observations of the originally planned 100 GHz Planck Low Frequency Instrument (LFI). The maps were made with three different codes. Two of these, ROMA and MapCUMBA, were implementations of maximum-likelihood (ML) map-making, whereas the third was an implementation of the destriping algorithm. The purpose of this paper is to compare these two methods, ML and destriping, in terms of the maps they produce and the angular power spectrum estimates derived from these maps. The difference in the maps produced by the two ML codes was found to be negligible. As expected, ML was found to produce maps with lower residual noise than destriping. In addition to residual noise, the maps also contain an error which is due to the effect of subpixel structure in the signal on the map-making method. This error is larger for ML than for destriping. If this error is not corrected a bias will be introduced in the power spectrum estimates. This study is related to Planck activities.

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arXiv2003

First Detection of Polarization of the Submillimetre Diffuse Galactic Dust Emission by Archeops

We present the first determination of the Galactic polarized emission at 353 GHz by Archeops. The data were taken during the Arctic night of February 7, 2002 after the balloon--borne instrument was launched by CNES from the Swedish Esrange base near Kiruna. In addition to the 143 GHz and 217 GHz frequency bands dedicated to CMB studies, Archeops had one 545 GHz and six 353 GHz bolometers mounted in three polarization sensitive pairs that were used for Galactic foreground studies. We present maps of the I, Q, U Stokes parameters over 17% of the sky and with a 13 arcmin resolution at 353 GHz (850 microns). They show a significant Galactic large scale polarized emission coherent on the longitude ranges [100, 120] and [180, 200] deg. with a degree of polarization at the level of 4-5%, in agreement with expectations from starlight polarization measurements. Some regions in the Galactic plane (Gem OB1, Cassiopeia) show an even stronger degree of polarization in the range 10-20%. Those findings provide strong evidence for a powerful grain alignment mechanism throughout the interstellar medium and a coherent magnetic field coplanar to the Galactic plane. This magnetic field pervades even some dense clouds. Extrapolated to high Galactic latitude, these results indicate that interstellar dust polarized emission is the major foreground for PLANCK-HFI CMB polarization measurement.

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