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Renyue Cen

Publications and source records attributed to Renyue Cen.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources

Composition of Low Redshift Halo Gas

Halo gas in low-z (z<0.5) >0.1L* galaxies in high-resolution, large-scale cosmological hydrodynamic simulations is examined with respect to three components: (cold, warm, hot) with temperatures equal to (<10^5, 10^{5-6}, >10^6)K, respectively. The warm component is compared, utilizing O VI λλ1032, 1038 absorption lines, to observations and agreement is found with respect to the galaxy-O VI line correlation, the ratio of O VI line incidence rate in blue to red galaxies and the amount of O VI mass in star-forming galaxies. A detailed account of the sources of warm halo gas (stellar feedback heating, gravitational shock heating and accretion from the intergalactic medium), inflowing and outflowing warm halo gas metallicity disparities and their dependencies on galaxy types and environment is also presented. Having the warm component securely anchored, our simulations make the following additional predictions. First, cold gas is the primary component in inner regions, with its mass comprising 50% of all gas within galacto-centric radius r=(30,150)kpc in (red, blue) galaxies. Second, at r>(30,200)kpc in (red, blue) galaxies the hot component becomes the majority. Third, the warm component is a perpetual minority, with its contribution peaking at ~30% at r=100-300kpc in blue galaxies and never exceeding 5% in red galaxies. The significant amount of cold gas in low-z early-type galaxies found in simulations, in agreement with recent observations (Thom et al.), is intriguing, so is the dominance of hot gas at large radii in blue galaxies.

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Validity of Hydrostatic Equilibrium in Galaxy Clusters from Cosmological Hydrodynamical Simulations

We examine the validity of the hydrostatic equilibrium (HSE) assumption for galaxy clusters using one of the highest-resolution cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. We define and evaluate several effective mass terms corresponding to the Euler equations of the gas dynamics, and quantify the degree of the validity of HSE in terms of the mass estimate. We find that the mass estimated under the HSE assumption (the HSE mass) deviates from the true mass by up to ~ 30 %. This level of departure from HSE is consistent with the previous claims, but our physical interpretation is rather different. We demonstrate that the inertial term in the Euler equations makes a negligible contribution to the total mass, and the overall gravity of the cluster is balanced by the thermal gas pressure gradient and the gas acceleration term. Indeed the deviation from the HSE mass is well explained by the acceleration term at almost all radii. We also clarify the confusion of previous work due to the inappropriate application of the Jeans equations in considering the validity of HSE from the gas dynamics extracted from cosmological hydrodynamical simulations.

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Reionization on Large Scales I: A Parametric Model Constructed from Radiation-Hydrodynamic Simulations

We present a new method for modeling inhomogeneous cosmic reionization on large scales. Utilizing high-resolution radiation-hydrodynamic simulations with 2048^3 dark matter particles, 2048^3 gas cells, and 17 billion adaptive rays in a L = 100 Mpc/h box, we show that the density and reionization-redshift fields are highly correlated on large scales (>~ 1 Mpc/h). This correlation can be statistically represented by a scale-dependent linear bias. We construct a parametric function for the bias, which is then used to filter any large-scale density field to derive the corresponding spatially varying reionization-redshift field. The parametric model has three free parameters which can be reduced to one free parameter when we fit the two bias parameters to simulations results. We can differentiate degenerate combinations of the bias parameters by combining results for the global ionization histories and correlation length between ionized regions. Unlike previous semi-analytic models, the evolution of the reionization-redshift field in our model is directly compared cell by cell against simulations and preforms well in all tests. Our model maps the high-resolution, intermediate-volume radiation-hydrodynamic simulations onto lower-resolution, larger-volume N-body simulations (>~ 2 Gpc/h) in order to make mock observations and theoretical predictions.

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Reionization on Large Scales III: Predictions for Low-ell Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization and High-ell Kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Observables

We present new predictions for temperature (on small angular scales) and polarization (on large angular scales) CMB anisotropies induced during the epoch of reionization (EoR). Using a novel method calibrated from Radiation-Hydrodynamic simulations we model the EoR in large volumes (L >~ 2 Gpc/h) in the context of galactic reionization. We find that the EoR contribution to the kinetic Sunyaev- Zel'dovich power spectrum (patchy kSZ) ranges between ~0.6 - 2.8 muK^2 at ell = 3000, for the parameter space we explored. These patchy kSZ power spectra are calculated from large 15 Deg x 15 Deg maps that are found to be necessary. Decreasing the size of these maps biases the overall patchy kSZ power to higher values. We find that the amplitude of the patchy kSZ power spectrum at ell = 3000 follows simple scalings of D_ell=3000^kSZ propto and D_ell=3000^kSZ propto Delz^0.47 for the mean redshift ( ) of reionization and the duration (dz). Using the constraints on from WMAP 7-year results and the lower limit on dz from EDGES we find a lower limit of ~ 0.4 muK^2 on the kSZ at ell = 3000. Planck will constrain the mean redshift and the Thomson optical depth from the low-ell polarization power spectrum. Future measurements of the high-ell CMB power spectrum from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) should detect the patchy kSZ signal if the cross correlation between the cosmic infrared background and the thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect is constrained. We show that the combination of temperature and polarization measurements constrains both and dz. The patchy kSZ maps, power spectra templates and the polarization power spectra will be publicly available.

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Nature of Lyman Alpha Blobs: Powered by Extreme Starbursts

We present a new model for the observed Lyman alpha blobs (LABs) within the context of the standard cold dark matter model. In this model, LABs are the most massive halos with the strongest clustering (proto-clusters) undergoing extreme starbursts in the high-z universe. Aided by calculations of detailed radiative transfer of Lya photons through ultra-high resolution (159pc) large-scale (>30Mpc) adaptive mesh-refinement cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with galaxy formation, this model is shown to be able to, for the first time, reproduce simultaneously the global Lya luminosity function and luminosity-size relation of the observed LABs. Physically, a combination of dust attenuation of Lya photons within galaxies, clustering of galaxies, and complex propagation of Lya photons through circumgalactic and intergalactic medium gives rise to the large sizes and frequently irregular isophotal shapes of LABs that are observed. A generic and unique prediction of this model is that there should be strong far-infrared (FIR) sources within each LAB, with the most luminous FIR source likely representing the gravitational center of the proto-cluster, not necessarily the apparent center of the Lya emission of the LAB or the most luminous optical source. Upcoming ALMA observations should unambiguously test this prediction. If verified, LABs will provide very valuable laboratories for studying formation of galaxies in the most overdense regions of the universe at a time when global star formation is most vigorous.

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Calibrating an updated SPH scheme within GCD+

We adapt a modern scheme of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) to our tree N-body/SPH galactic chemodynamics code GCD+. The applied scheme includes imple- mentations of the artificial viscosity switch and artificial thermal conductivity pro- posed by Morris & Monaghan (1997), Rosswog & Price (2007) and Price (2008), to model discontinuities and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities more accurately. We first present hydrodynamics test simulations and contrast the results to runs undertaken without artificial viscosity switch or thermal conduction. In addition, we also explore the different levels of smoothing by adopting larger or smaller smoothing lengths, i.e. a larger or smaller number of neighbour particles, Nnb. We demonstrate that the new version of GCD+ is capable of modelling Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities to a simi- lar level as the mesh code, Athena. From the Gresho vortex, point-like explosion and self-similar collapse tests, we conclude that setting the smoothing length to keep the number of neighbour particles as high as Nnb~58 is preferable to adopting smaller smoothing lengths. We present our optimised parameter sets from the hydrodynamics tests.

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Comparisons of Cosmological MHD Galaxy Cluster Simulations to Radio Observations

Radio observations of galaxy clusters show that there are $μ$G magnetic fields permeating the intra-cluster medium (ICM), but it is hard to accurately constrain the strength and structure of the magnetic fields without the help of advanced computer simulations. We present qualitative comparisons of synthetic VLA observations of simulated galaxy clusters to radio observations of Faraday Rotation Measure (RM) and radio halos. The cluster formation is modeled using adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) simulations with the assumption that the initial magnetic fields are injected into the ICM by active galactic nuclei (AGNs) at high redshift. In addition to simulated clusters in Xu et al. (2010, 2011), we present a new simulation with magnetic field injections from multiple AGNs. We find that the cluster with multiple injection sources is magnetized to a similar level as in previous simulations with a single AGN. The RM profiles from simulated clusters, both $|RM|$ and the dispersion of RM ($σ_{RM}$), are consistent at a first-order with the radial distribution from observations. The correlations between the $σ_{RM}$ and X-ray surface brightness from simulations are in a broad agreement with the observations, although there is an indication that the simulated clusters could be slightly over-dense and less magnetized with respect to those in the observed sample. In addition, the simulated radio halos agree with the observed correlations between the radio power versus the cluster X-ray luminosity and between the radio power versus the radio halo size. These studies show that the cluster wide magnetic fields that originate from AGNs and are then amplified by the ICM turbulence (Xu et al. 2010) match observations of magnetic fields in galaxy clusters.

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Effects on Galaxy Evolution: Pair Interactions versus Environment

In a hierarchical universe, mergers may be an important mechanism not only in increasing the mass of galaxies but also in driving the color and morphological evolution of galaxies. We use a large sample of ~1000 simulated galaxies of stellar mass greater than 10^9.6 solar masses (for ~4800 observations at multiple redshifts) from a high-res (0.46 h^{-1} kpc) cosmological simulation to determine under what circumstances being a member of a pair influences galaxy properties at z <= 0.2. We identify gravitationally bound pairs, and find a relative fraction of blue-blue, red-red, and blue-red pairs that agrees with observations (Lin et al. 2010). Pairs tend to avoid the extreme environments of clusters and void centres. While pairs in groups can include galaxies that are both blue, both red, or one of each color, in the field it is rare for pair galaxies to both be red. We find that physically bound pairs closer than 250 h^{-1} kpc tend to have higher sSFRs than the galaxy population as a whole. However, the sSFR of a bound galaxy relative to galaxies in a comparable local density environment (determined by the distance to the fifth nearest neighbor, rho_5), differs depending on the local density. In regions of high rho_5 the bound population has a higher fraction of star-forming (bluer) galaxies, whereas there is very little difference between bound and unbound galaxies in low rho_5 regions. This effect on the star-forming fraction may be driven by the higher fraction of bound HI-rich galaxies compared to unbound galaxies, particularly at high local densities. It appears that being in a pair has an incremental, but not overwhelming, effect on the star formation rate of the paired galaxies, compared to the more pronounced trend where galaxies overall have low sSFR (are red) in clusters and higher sSFR (blue) at the centre of voids. This trend depends most strongly on rho_5.(abridged)

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Physics of Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes

A new model for coevolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes (SMBH) is presented that is physically based. The evolutionary track starts with an event that triggers a significant starburst in the central region of a galaxy. In this model, the main SMBH growth takes place in post-starburst phase fueled by recycled gas from inner bulge stars in a self-regulated fashion on a time scale that is substantially longer than 100Myrs and at a diminishing Eddington ratio with time. We argue that the SMBH cannot gorge itself during the starburst phase, despite the abundant supply of cold gas, because star formation is a preferred mode of gas consumption in such an environment than accretion to the central SMBH. We also show that feedback from star formation is at least as strong as that from AGN and thus, if star formation is in need of being quenched, AGN feedback generally does not play the primary role. The predicted relation between SMBH mass and bulge mass/velocity dispersion is consistent with observations. A clear prediction is that early-type galaxy hosts of high Eddingtion rate AGNs are expected to be light-blue to green in optical color, gradually evolving to the red sequences with decreasing AGN luminosity. A suite of falsifiable predictions and implications with respect to relationships between various types of galaxies and AGN, and others, are made. For those where comparisons to extant observations are possible, the model appears to be in good standing.

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Coincidences between OVI and OVII Lines: Insights from High Resolution Simulations of the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium

With high resolution (0.46kpc/h), adaptive mesh-refinement Eulerian cosmological hydrodynamic simulations we compute properties of O VI and O VII absorbers from the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). Our new simulations are in broad agreement with previous simulations, with ~40% of the intergalactic medium being in the WHIM at z=0. It is found (1) The amount of gas in the WHIM at temperature below and above 10^6K is about equal within uncertainties. (1) Our simulations are in excellent agreement with observed properties of O VI absorbers, with respect to the line incidence rate and Doppler width-column density relation. (2) Velocity structures within absorbing regions are a significant, and for large Doppler width clouds, a dominant contributor to the Doppler widths of both O VI and O VII absorbers. A non-negligible fraction (in number and mass) of O VI and O VII clouds can arise from gas of temperature lower than 10^5, until the Doppler width is well in excess of 100km/s. (3) Strong O VI absorbers are predominantly collisionally ionized. About (61%, 57%, 39%) of O VI absorbers in the column density ranges of log N(OVI) cm^2=(12.5-13,13-14,>14) have temperature lower than 10^5K. (4) Quantitative prediction is made for the presence of broad and shallow O VI lines, which current observations may have largely missed. Upcoming observations by COS may be able to provide a test. (5) The reported 3 sigma upper limit on the mean column density of coincidental O VII lines at the location of detected O VI lines by Yao et al is above the predicted value by a factor of 2.5-4. (6) The claimed observational detection of O VII lines by Nicastro et al, if true, is 2 sigma above what our simulations predict.

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Calibration of Nonthermal Pressure in Global Dark Matter Simulations of Clusters of Galaxies

We present a new method for incorporating nonthermal pressure from bulk motions of gas into an analytic model of the intracluster medium in clusters of galaxies, which is based on a polytropic equation of state and hydrostatic equilibrium inside gravitational potential wells drawn from cosmological dark matter simulations. The pressure is allowed to have thermal and nonthermal components with different radial distributions; the overall level of nonthermal support is based on the dynamical state of the halo, such that it is lower in more relaxed clusters. This level is normalized by comparison to pressure profiles derived from X-ray observations, and to a high resolution hydrodynamical simulation. The nonthermal pressure fraction measured at r_500 is typically in the range 10-20%, increasing with cluster mass and with redshift. The resulting model cluster properties are in accord with Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect observations of clusters. Inclusion of nonthermal pressure reduces the expected angular power spectrum of SZ fluctuations in the microwave sky by 24%.

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Inconsequence of Galaxy Major Mergers in Driving Star Formation at z>1: Insights from Cosmological Simulations

Utilizing a high-resolution (114 pc/h) adaptive mesh-refinement cosmological galaxy formation simulation of the standard cold dark matter model with a large (2000-3000 galaxies with stellar mass greater than 1e9 Msun) statistical sample, we examine the role of major mergers in driving star formation at z>1 in a cosmological setting, after validating that some of the key properties of simulated galaxies are in reasonable agreement with observations, including luminosity functions, SF history, effective sizes and damped Lyman alpha systems. We find that major mergers have a relatively modest effect on star formation, in marked contrast to previous idealized merger simulations of disk galaxies that show up to two orders of magnitude increase in star formation rate. At z=2.4-3.7, major mergers tend to increase the specific star formation rate by 10-25% for galaxies in the entire stellar mass range 10^9-10^12 Msun probed. Their effect appears to increase with decreasing redshift, but is capped at 60% at z=1.4-2.4. Two factors may account for this modest effect. First, SFR of galaxies not in major mergers are much higher at z>1 than local disk galaxy counterparts. Second, most galaxies at z>1 have small sizes and contain massive dense bulges, which suppress the merger induced structural effects and gas inflow enhancement. Various other predictions are also made that will provide verifiable tests of the model.

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Far-Infrared Properties of Lyman Break Galaxies from Cosmological Simulations

Utilizing state-of-the-art, adaptive mesh-refinement cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with ultra-high resolution (114h-1pc) and large sample size (>3300 galaxies of stellar mass >10^9Msun), we show how the stellar light of Lyman Break Galaxies at z=2 is distributed between optical/ultra-violet (UV) and far-infrared (FIR) bands. With a single scalar parameter for dust obscuration we can simultaneously reproduce the observed UV luminosity function for the entire range (3-100 Msun/yr) and extant FIR luminosity function at the bright end (>20Msun/yr). We quantify that galaxies more massive or having higher SFR tend to have larger amounts of dust obscuration mostly due to a trend in column density and in a minor part due to a mass (or SFR)-metallicity relation. It is predicted that the FIR luminosity function in the range SFR=1-100Msun/yr is a powerlaw with a slope about -1.7. We further predict that there is a "galaxy desert" at SFR(FIR) < 0.02 (SFR(UV)/10Msun/yr)^2.1 Msun/yr in the SFR(UV)-SFR(FIR) plane. Detailed distributions of SFR(FIR) at a fixed SFR(UV) are presented. Upcoming observations by ALMA should test this model. If confirmed, it validates the predictions of the standard cold dark matter model and has important implications on the intrinsic SFR function of galaxies at high redshift.

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Extended Lyman-Alpha Emission around Star-forming Galaxies

Lyman-alpha (Lya) photons that escape the interstellar medium of star-forming galaxies may be resonantly scattered by neutral hydrogen atoms in the circumgalactic and intergalactic media, thereby increasing the angular extent of the galaxy's Lya emission. We present predictions of this extended, low surface brightness Lya emission based on radiative transfer modeling in a cosmological reionization simulation. The extended emission can be detected from stacked narrowband images of Lya emitters (LAEs) or of Lyman break galaxies (LBGs). Its average surface brightness profile has a central cusp, then flattens to an approximate plateau beginning at an inner characteristic scale below ~0.2 Mpc (comoving), then steepens again beyond an outer characteristic scale of ~1 Mpc. The inner scale marks the transition from scattered light of the central source to emission from clustered sources, while the outer scale marks the spatial extent of scattered emission from these clustered sources. Both scales tend to increase with halo mass, UV luminosity, and observed Lya luminosity. The extended emission predicted by our simulation is already within reach of deep narrowband photometry using large ground-based telescopes. Such observations would test radiative transfer models of emission from LAEs and LBGs, and they would open a new window on the circumgalactic environment of high-redshift star-forming galaxies.

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Environmentally Driven Global Evolution of Galaxies

Utilizing high-resolution large-scale galaxy formation simulations of the standard cold dark matter model, we examine global trends in the evolution of galaxies due to gravitational shock heating by collapse of large halos and large-scale structure. We find two major global trends. (1) The mean specific star formation rate (sSFR) at a given galaxy mass is a monotonically increasing function with increasing redshift. (2) The mean sSFR at a given redshift is a monotonically increasing function of decreasing galaxy mass that steepens with decreasing redshift. The general dimming trend with time merely reflects the general decline of gas inflow rate with increasing time. The differential evolution of galaxies of different masses with redshift is a result of gravitational shock heating of gas due to formation of large halos (groups and clusters) and large-scale structure that move a progressively larger fraction of galaxies and their satellites into environments where gas has too high an entropy to cool to continue feeding resident galaxies. Overdense regions where larger halos are preferentially located begin to be heated earlier and have higher temperatures than lower density regions at any given time, causing sSFR of larger galaxies to fall below the general dimming trend at higher redshift than less massive galaxies and galaxies with high sSFR to gradually shift to lower density environments at lower redshift. We find that several noted cosmic downsizing phenomena are different manifestations of these general trends. We also find that the great migration of galaxies from blue cloud to red sequence as well as color-density relation, among others, may arise naturally in this picture.

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Star Formation Feedback and Metal Enrichment History Of The Intergalactic Medium

Using hydrodynamic simulations we compute the metal enrichment history of the intergalactic medium (IGM). We show that galactic superwind (GSW) feedback can transport metals to the IGM and that the properties of simulated metal absorbers match observations. The distance of influence of GSW is typically limited to >0.5Mpc and within regions of overdensity >10. Most CIV and OVI absorbers are located within shocked regions of elevated temperature (T>2x10^4K), overdensity (>10), and metallicity ([-2.5,-0.5]). OVI absorbers have typically higher metallicity, lower density and higher temperature than CIV absorbers. For OVI absorbers collisional ionization dominates over the entire redshift range z=0-6, whereas for CIV absorbers the transition occurs at moderate redshift z~3 from collisionally dominated to photoionization dominated. We find that the observed column density distributions for CIV and OVI in the range log N cm^2=12-15 are reasonably reproduced by the simulations. The evolution of mass densities contained in CIV and OVI lines, Omega_CIV and Omega_OVI, is also in good agreement with observations, which shows a near constancy at low redshifts and an exponential drop beyond redshift z=3-4. For both CIV and OVI, most absorbers are transient and the amount of metals probed by CIV and OVI lines of column log N cm^2=12-15 is only ~2% of total metal density at any epoch. While gravitational shocks from large-scale structure formation dominate the energy budget (80-90%) for turning about 50% of IGM to the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) by z=0, GSW feedback shocks are energetically dominant over gravitational shocks at z > 1-2. Most of the so-called "missing metals" at z=2-3 are hidden in a warm-hot (T=10^{4.5-7}K) gaseous phase, heated up by GSW feedback shocks. Their mass distribution is broadly peaked at $δ=1-10$ in the IGM, outside virialized halos.

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Grand Unification II: Hot Accretion and AGN Jets

We show that a quasi-spherical (QS) hot accretion flow is expected to operate in all SMBHs, with its rate being capped at dot m_QS,max~0.001 (M/1E8Msun) in units of the Eddington rate. It is then proposed that AGN jet power is proportional to the product of the hot accretion rate and a SMBH spin-dependent efficiency for energy extraction in the form of jets. Predictions from this model include (1) while radio jets should emerge from all SMBHs, the maximum jet power goes with SMBH mass approximately as 1E43.6(M/1E8Msun)^{2}erg/s, (2) even although there are two separate underlying populations of radio-quiet (RQ) and radio-loud (RL) AGNs, any bimodality in the observed AGN radio loudness distribution is likely due to a selection effect, such as some imposed optical magnitude limits, (3) the RL fraction of quasars is expected to decrease with redshift in the cold dark matter model, (4) host galaxies of RQ and RL quasars should be drawn from the same underlying elliptical galaxy population, although RL quasars may have SMBHs that are somewhat more massive than their RQ counterparts and RL quasars may reside predominantly in core elliptical galaxies, (5) RL low-luminosity AGNs and LINERs may represent the long, declining "trailing" phase following the initial, more luminous AGN phase, (6) a broad anti-correlation between radio- loudness and disk accretion rate is expected, (7) RL AGNs may be expected to be more abundant in Type Ia supernovae than RQ AGNs, (8) among RL AGNs a correlation between radio power and clustering strength is predicted, and (9) RQ and RL AGNs should have, on average, similar IR-optical-UV properties. ~

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Simulated void galaxies in the standard cold dark matter model

We analyze a (120 h^{-1} Mpc)^3 adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic simulation that contains a higher-resolution 31 x 31 x 35 h^{-3} Mpc subvolume centered on a ~30 Mpc diameter void. Our detailed ~1 kpc resolution allows us to identify 1300 galaxies within this void to a limiting halo mass of ~10^{10} M_sun. Nearly 1000 galaxies are found to be in underdense regions, with 300 galaxies residing in regions less than half the mean density of the simulation volume. We construct mock observations of the stellar and gas properties of these systems, and reproduce the range of colors and luminosities observed in the SDSS for nearby (z < 0.03) galaxies. We find no trends with density for the most luminous (M_r < -18) galaxies, however our dwarf void galaxies (M_r > -16), though they are less reliably resolved, typically appear bluer, with higher rates of star formation and specific star formation and lower mean stellar ages than galaxies in average density environments. We find a significant population of low luminosity (M_r ~ -14) dwarf galaxies that is preferentially located in low density regions and specifically in the void center. This population may help to reduce, but not remove, the discrepancy between the predicted and observed number of void galaxies.

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