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Romain Teyssier

Publications and source records attributed to Romain Teyssier.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

Numerical cosmology on the GPU with Enzo and Ramses

A number of scientific numerical codes can currently exploit GPUs with remarkable performance. In astrophysics, Enzo and Ramses are prime examples of such applications. The two codes have been ported to GPUs adopting different strategies and programming models, Enzo adopting CUDA and Ramses using OpenACC. We describe here the different solutions used for the GPU implementation of both cases. Performance benchmarks will be presented for Ramses. The results of the usage of the more mature GPU version of Enzo, adopted for a scientific project within the CHRONOS programme, will be summarised.

astro-ph.IM↗

Baryonic effects on weak-lensing two-point statistics and its cosmological implications

We develop an extension of \textit{the Halo Model} that describes analytically the corrections to the matter power spectrum due to the physics of baryons. We extend these corrections to the weak-lensing shear angular power spectrum. Within each halo, our baryonic model accounts for: 1) a central galaxy, the major stellar component whose properties are derived from abundance matching techniques; 2) a hot plasma in hydrostatic equilibrium and 3) an adiabatically-contracted dark matter component. This analytic approach allows us to compare our model to the dark-matter-only case. Our basic assumptions are tested against the hydrodynamical simulations of Martizzi et. al. (2014), with which a remarkable agreement is found. Our baryonic model has only one free parameter, $M_{\rm crit}$, the critical halo mass that marks the transition between feedback-dominated halos, mostly devoid of gas, and gas rich halos, in which AGN feedback effects become weaker. We explore the entire cosmological parameter space, using the angular power spectrum in three redshift bins as the observable, assuming a Euclid-like survey. We derive the corresponding constraints on the cosmological parameters, as well as the possible bias introduced by neglecting the effects of baryonic physics. We find that, up to $\ell_{max}$=4000, baryonic physics plays very little role in the cosmological parameters estimation. However, if one goes up to $\ell_{max}$=8000, the marginalized errors on the cosmological parameters can be significantly reduced, but neglecting baryonic physics can lead to bias in the recovered cosmological parameters up to 10$σ$. These biases are removed if one takes into account the main baryonic parameter, $M_{\rm crit}$, which can also be determined up to 1-2\%, along with the other cosmological parameters.

astro-ph.CO↗

Towards a more realistic sink particle algorithm for the RAMSES code

We present a new sink particle algorithm developed for the Adaptive Mesh Refinement code RAMSES. Our main addition is the use of a clump finder to identify density peaks and their associated regions (the peak patches). This allows us to unambiguously define a discrete set of dense molecular cores as potential sites for sink particle formation. Furthermore, we develop a new scheme to decide if the gas in which a sink could potentially form, is indeed gravitationally bound and rapidly collapsing. This is achieved using a general integral form of the virial theorem, where we use the curvature in the gravitational potential to correctly account for the background potential. We detail all the necessary steps to follow the evolution of sink particles in turbulent molecular cloud simulations, such as sink production, their trajectory integration, sink merging and finally the gas accretion rate onto an existing sink. We compare our new recipe for sink formation to other popular implementations. Statistical properties such as the sink mass function, the average sink mass and the sink multiplicity function are used to evaluate the impact that our new scheme has on accurately predicting fundamental quantities such as the stellar initial mass function or the stellar multiplicity function.

astro-ph.SR↗

A Systematic Look at the Effects of Radiative Feedback on Disc Galaxy Formation

Galaxy formation models and simulations rely on various feedback mechanisms to reproduce the observed baryonic scaling relations and galaxy morphologies. Although dwarf galaxy and giant elliptical properties can be explained using feedback from supernova and active galactic nuclei, Milky Way-sized galaxies still represent a challenge to current theories of galaxy formation. In this paper, we explore the possible role of feedback from stellar radiation in regulating the main properties of disk galaxies such as our own Milky Way. We have performed a suite of cosmological simulations of the same $\sim10^{12} {\rm M}_{\odot}$ halo selected based on its rather typical mass accretion history. We have implemented radiative feedback from young stars using a crude model of radiative transfer for ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) radiation. However, the model is realistic enough such that the dust opacity plays a direct role in regulating the efficiency of our feedback mechanism. We have explored various models for the dust opacity, assuming different constant dust temperatures, as well as a varying dust temperature model. We find that while strong radiative feedback appears as a viable mechanism to regulate the stellar mass fraction in massive galaxies, it also prevents the formation of discs with reasonable morphologies. In models with strong stellar radiation feedback, stellar discs are systematically too thick while the gas disc morphology is completely destroyed due to the efficient mixing between the feedback-affected gas and its surroundings. At the resolution of our simulation suite, we find it impossible to preserve spiral disc morphology while at the same time expelling enough baryons to satisfy the abundance matching constraints.

astro-ph.CO↗

Chameleon $f(R)$ gravity on the Virgo cluster scale

Models of modified gravity offer promising alternatives to the concordance $Λ$CDM cosmology to explain the late-time acceleration of the universe. A popular such model is $f(R)$ gravity, in which the Ricci scalar in the Einstein-Hilbert action is replaced by a general function of it. We study the $f(R)$ model of Hu & Sawicki (2007), which recovers standard General Relativity in high density regimes, while reproducing the desired late-time acceleration at cosmological scales. We run a suite of high resolution zoom simulations using the ECOSMOG code to examine the effect of $f(R)$ gravity on the properties of a halo that is analogous to the Virgo cluster. We show that the velocity dispersion profiles can potentially discriminate between $f(R)$ models and $Λ$CDM, and provide complementary analysis of lensing signal profiles to explore the possibility to further distinguish the different $f(R)$ models. Our results confirm the techniques explored by Cabre et al. (2012) to quantify the effect of environment in the behavior of $f(R)$ gravity, and we extend them to study halo satellites at various redshifts. We find that the modified gravity effects in our models are most observable at low redshifts, and that effects are generally stronger for satellites far from the center of the main halo. We show that the screening properties of halo satellites trace very well that of dark matter particles, which means that low-resolution simulations in which subhalos are not very well resolved can in principle be used to study satellite properties. We discuss observables, particularly for halo satellites, that can potentially be used to constrain the observational viability of $f(R)$ gravity.

astro-ph.CO↗

Brightest Cluster Galaxies in Cosmological Simulations with Adaptive Mesh Refinement: Successes and Failures

A large sample of cosmological hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations with Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) is analysed to study the properties of simulated Brightest Cluster Galaxies (BCGs). Following the formation and evolution of BCGs requires modeling an entire galaxy cluster, because the BCG properties are largely influenced by the state of the gas in the cluster and by interactions and mergers with satellites. BCG evolution is also deeply influenced by the presence of gas heating sources such as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) that prevent catastrophic cooling of large amounts of gas. We show that AGN feedback is one of the most important mechanisms in shaping the properties of BCGs at low redshift by analysing our statistical sample of simulations with and without AGN feedback. When AGN feedback is included BCG masses, sizes, star formation rates and kinematic properties are closer to those of the observed systems. Some small discrepancies are observed only for the most massive BCGs and in the fraction of star-forming BCGs, effects that might be due to physical processes that are not included in our model.

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Dancing in the dark: galactic properties trace spin swings along the cosmic web

A large-scale hydrodynamical cosmological simulation, Horizon-AGN, is used to investigate the alignment between the spin of galaxies and the cosmic filaments above redshift 1.2. The analysis of more than 150 000 galaxies per time step in the redshift range 1.2<z<1.8 with morphological diversity shows that the spin of low-mass blue galaxies is preferentially aligned with their neighbouring filaments, while high-mass red galaxies tend to have a perpendicular spin. The reorientation of the spin of massive galaxies is provided by galaxy mergers, which are significant in their mass build-up. We find that the stellar mass transition from alignment to misalignment happens around 3.10^10 M_sun. Galaxies form in the vorticity-rich neighbourhood of filaments, and migrate towards the nodes of the cosmic web as they convert their orbital angular momentum into spin. The signature of this process can be traced to the properties of galaxies, as measured relative to the cosmic web. We argue that a strong source of feedback such as active galactic nuclei is mandatory to quench in situ star formation in massive galaxies and promote various morphologies. It allows mergers to play their key role by reducing post-merger gas inflows and, therefore, keeping spins misaligned with cosmic filaments.

astro-ph.CO↗

The biasing of baryons on the cluster mass function and cosmological parameter estimation

We study the effect of baryonic processes on the halo mass function in the galaxy cluster mass range using a catalogue of 153 high resolution cosmological hydrodynamical simulations performed with the AMR code ramses. We use the results of our simulations within a simple analytical model to gauge the effects of baryon physics on the halo mass function. Neglect of AGN feedback leads to a significant boost in the cluster mass function similar to that reported by other authors. However, including AGN feedback not only gives rise to systems that are similar to observed galaxy clusters, but they also reverse the global baryonic effects on the clusters. The resulting mass function is closer to the unmodified dark matter halo mass function but still contains a mass dependent bias at the 5-10% level. These effects bias measurements of the cosmological parameters, such as $σ_8$ and $Ω_m$. For current cluster surveys baryonic effects are within the noise for current survey volumes, but forthcoming and planned large SZ, X-ray and multi-wavelength surveys will be biased at the percent level by these processes. The predictions for the halo mass function including baryonic effects need to be carefully studied with larger and improved simulations. However, simulations of full cosmological boxes with the resolution we achieve and including AGN feedback are still computationally challenging.

astro-ph.CO↗

The role of turbulence in star formation laws and thresholds

The Schmidt-Kennicutt relation links the surface densities of gas to the star formation rate in galaxies. The physical origin of this relation, and in particular its break, i.e. the transition between an inefficient regime at low gas surface densities and a main regime at higher densities, remains debated. Here, we study the physical origin of the star formation relations and breaks in several low-redshift galaxies, from dwarf irregulars to massive spirals. We use numerical simulations representative of the Milky Way, the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds with parsec up to subparsec resolution, and which reproduce the observed star formation relations and the relative variations of the star formation thresholds. We analyze the role of interstellar turbulence, gas cooling, and geometry in drawing these relations, at 100 pc scale. We suggest in particular that the existence of a break in the Schmidt- Kennicutt relation could be linked to the transition from subsonic to supersonic turbulence and is independent of self-shielding effects. This transition being connected to the gas thermal properties and thus to the metallicity, the break is shifted toward high surface densities in metal-poor galaxies, as observed in dwarf galaxies. Our results suggest that together with the collapse of clouds under self-gravity, turbulence (injected at galactic scale) can induce the compression of gas and regulate star formation.

astro-ph.GA↗

A fast, robust, and simple implicit method for adaptive time-stepping on adaptive mesh-refinement grids

Implicit solvers present strong limitations when used on supercomputing facilities and in particular for adaptive mesh-refinement codes. We present a new method for implicit adaptive time-stepping on adaptive mesh refinement-grids. We implement it in the radiation hydrodynamics solver we designed for the RAMSES code for astrophysical purposes and, more particularly, for protostellar collapse. We briefly recall the radiation hydrodynamics equations and the adaptive time-stepping methodology used for hydrodynamical solvers. We then introduce the different types of boundary conditions (Dirichlet, Neumann, and Robin) that are used at the interface between levels and present our implementation of the new method in the RAMSES code. The method is tested against classical diffusion and radiation hydrodynamics tests, after which we present an application for protostellar collapse. We show that using Dirichlet boundary conditions at level interfaces is a good compromise between robustness and accuracy and that it can be used in structure formation calculations. The gain in computational time over our former unique time step method ranges from factors of 5 to 50 depending on the level of adaptive time-stepping and on the problem. We successfully compare the old and new methods for protostellar collapse calculations that involve highly nonlinear physics. We have developed a simple but robust method for adaptive time-stepping of implicit scheme on adaptive mesh-refinement grids. It can be applied to a wide variety of physical problems that involve diffusion processes.

astro-ph.IM↗

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↗

Simulating gamma-ray binaries with a relativistic extension of RAMSES

Gamma-ray binaries are composed of a massive star and a rotation-powered pulsar with a highly relativistic wind. The collision between the winds from both objects creates a shock structure where particles are accelerated, resulting in the observed high energy emission. We study the impact of special relativity on the structure and stability of the colliding wind region and highlight the differences with colliding winds from massive stars. We focus on evolution with increasing values of the Lorentz factor of the pulsar wind, keeping in mind that current simulations are unable to reach the expected values of the pulsar wind Lorentz factors by orders of magnitude. We use high resolution numerical simulations with a relativistic extension to the hydrodynamics code RAMSES we have developed. Using 2D simulations, we focus on the region close to the binary, neglecting orbital motion. We use different values of the Lorentz factor of the pulsar wind, up to 16. We find analytic scaling relations between stellar wind collisions and gamma-ray binaries. They provide the position of the contact discontinuity. The position of the shocks strongly depends on the Lorentz factor, the relativistic wind is more collimated than expected based on non-relativistic simulations. Beyond a certain distance, the shocked flow is accelerated to its initial velocity and follows adiabatic expansion. We provide guidance for extrapolation towards more realistic values of the Lorentz factor of the pulsar wind. We extended the adaptive mesh refinement code RAMSES to relativistic hydrodynamics. This code is suited for the study of astrophysical objects such as pulsar wind nebulae, gamma-ray bursts or relativistic jets and will be part of the next public release of RAMSES. Using this code we performed simulations of gamma-ray binaries, highlighting the limits and possibilities of current hydrodynamic models of such systems.

astro-ph.IM↗

RAMSES-RT: Radiation hydrodynamics in the cosmological context

We present a new implementation of radiation hydrodynamics (RHD) in the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code RAMSES. The multi-group radiative transfer (RT) is performed on the AMR grid with a first-order Godunov method using the M1 closure for the Eddington tensor, and is coupled to the hydrodynamics via non-equilibrium thermochemistry of hydrogen and helium. This moment-based approach has the large advantage that the computational cost is independent of the number of radiative sources - it can even deal with continuous regions of emission such as bound-free emission from gas. As it is built directly into RAMSES, the RT takes natural advantage of the refinement and parallelization strategies already in place. Since we use an explicit advection solver for the radiative transport, the time step is restricted by the speed of light - a severe limitation that can be alleviated using the so--called "reduced speed of light" approximation. We propose a rigorous framework to assess the validity of this approximation in various conditions encountered in cosmology and galaxy formation. We finally perform with our newly developed code a complete suite of RHD tests, comparing our results to other RHD codes. The tests demonstrate that our code performs very well and is ideally suited for exploring the effect of radiation on current scenarios of structure and galaxy formation.

astro-ph.CO↗

The long lives of giant clumps and the birth of outflows in gas-rich galaxies at high redshift

Star-forming disk galaxies at high redshift are often subject to violent disk instability, characterized by giant clumps whose fate is yet to be understood. The main question is whether the clumps disrupt within their dynamical timescale (<50Myr), like molecular clouds in today's galaxies, or whether they survive stellar feedback for more than a disk orbital time (~300Myr) in which case they can migrate inward and help building the central bulge. We present 3.5-7pc resolution AMR simulations of high-redshift disks including photo-ionization, radiation pressure, and supernovae feedback (Renaud et al. 2013, and Perret et al., this astro-ph issue). Our modeling of radiation pressure determines the mass loading and initial velocity of winds from basic physical principles. We find that the giant clumps produce steady outflow rates comparable to and sometimes somewhat larger than their star formation rate, with velocities largely sufficient to escape galaxy. The clumps also lose mass, especially old stars, by tidal stripping, and the stellar populations contained in the clumps hence remain relatively young (<=200Myr), as observed. The clumps survive gaseous outflows and stellar loss, because they are wandering in gas-rich turbulent disks from which they can re-accrete gas at high rates compensating for outflows and tidal stripping, overall keeping realistic and self-regulated gaseous and stellar masses. Our simulations produce gaseous outflows with velocities, densities and mass loading consistent with observations, and at the same time suggest that the giant clumps survive for hundreds of Myr and complete their migration to the center of high-redshift galaxies, without rapid dispersion and reformation of clumps.

astro-ph.CO↗

Beyond the nuclear starburst? Clustered star formation in major mergers

Recent simulation work has successfully captured the formation of the star clusters that have been observed in merging galaxies. These studies, however, tend to focus on studying extreme starbursts, such as the Antennae galaxies. We aim to establish whether there is something special occurring in these extreme systems or whether the mechanism for cluster formation is present in all mergers to a greater or lesser degree. We undertake a general study of merger-induced star formation in a sample of 5 pc resolution adaptive mesh refinement simulations of low redshift equal-mass mergers with randomly-chosen orbital parameters. We find that there is an enhanced mass fraction of very dense gas that appears as the gas density probability density function evolves during the merger. This finding has implications for the interpretation of some observations; a larger mass fraction of dense gas could account for the enhanced HCN/CO ratios seen in ULIRGs and predicts that alpha_CO is lower in mergers, as for a given mass of H_2, CO emission will increase in a denser environment. We also find that as the star formation rate increases, there is a correlated peak in the velocity dispersion of the gas, which we attribute to increasing turbulence driven by the interaction itself. Star formation tends to be clumpy: in some cases there is extended clumpy star formation, but even when star formation is concentrated within the inner kpc (i.e. what may be considered a nuclear starburst) it still often has a clumpy, rather than a smooth, distribution. We find no strong evidence for a clear bimodality in the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation for the average mergers simulated here. Instead, they are typically somewhat offset above the predicted quiescent relation during their starbursts.

astro-ph.CO↗

Volume Rendering of AMR Simulations

High-resolution simulations often rely on the Adaptive Mesh Resolution (AMR) technique to optimize memory consumption versus attainable precision. While this technique allows for dramatic improvements in terms of computing performance, the analysis and visualization of its data outputs remain challenging. The lack of effective volume renderers for the octree-based AMR used by the RAMSES simulation program has led to the development of the solutions presented in this paper. Two custom algorithms are discussed, based on the splatting and the ray-casting techniques. Their usage is illustrated in the context of the visualization of a high-resolution, 6000-processor simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy. Performance obtained in terms of memory management and parallelism speedup are presented.

cs.DS↗

Cusp-core transformations in dwarf galaxies: observational predictions

The presence of a dark matter core in the central kiloparsec of many dwarf galaxies has been a long standing problem in galaxy formation theories based on the standard cold dark matter paradigm. Recent cosmological simulations, based on Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics and rather strong feedback recipes have shown that it was indeed possible to form extended dark matter cores using baryonic processes related to a more realistic treatment of the interstellar medium. Using adaptive mesh refinement, together with a new, stronger supernovae feedback scheme that we have recently implemented in the RAMSES code, we show that it is also possible to form a prominent dark matter core within the well-controlled framework of an isolated, initially cuspy, 10 billion solar masses dark matter halo. Although our numerical experiment is idealized, it allows a clean and unambiguous identification of the dark matter core formation process. Our dark matter inner profile is well fitted by a pseudo-isothermal profile with a core radius of 800 pc. The core formation mechanism is consistent with the one proposed recently by Pontzen & Governato. We highlight two key observational predictions of all simulations that find cusp-core transformations: (i) a bursty star formation history with peak to trough ratio of 5 to 10 and a duty cycle comparable to the local dynamical time; and (ii) a stellar distribution that is hot with v/sigma=1. We compare the observational properties of our model galaxy with recent measurements of the isolated dwarf WLM. We show that the spatial and kinematical distribution of stars and HI gas are in striking agreement with observations, supporting the fundamental role played by stellar feedback in shaping both the stellar and dark matter distribution.

astro-ph.CO↗

Hydrodynamics of galaxy mergers with supermassive black holes: is there a last parsec problem ?

We study the formation of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary and the shrinking of the separation of the two holes to sub-pc scales starting from a realistic major merger between two gas-rich spiral galaxies with mass comparable to our Milky Way. The simulations, carried out with the Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) code RAMSES, are capable of resolving separations as small as 0.1 pc. The collision of the two galaxies produces a gravo-turbulent rotating nuclear disk with mass (10^9 Msun) and size (60 pc) in excellent agreement with previous SPH simulations with particle splitting that used a similar setup (Mayer et al. 2007) but were limited to separations of a few parsecs. The AMR results confirm that the two black holes sink rapidly as a result of dynamical friction onto the gaseous background, reaching a separation of 1 pc in less than 10^7 yr. We show that the dynamical friction wake is well resolved by our model and we find good agreement with analytical predictions of the drag force as a function of the Mach number. Below 1 pc, black hole pairing slows down significantly, as the relative velocity between the sinking SMBH becomes highly subsonic and the mass contained within their orbit falls below the mass of the binary itself, rendering dynamical friction ineffective. In this final stage, the black holes have not opened a gap as the gaseous background is highly pressurized in the center. Non-axisymmetric gas torques do not arise to restart sinking in absence of efficient dynamical friction, at variance with previous calculations using idealized equilibrium nuclear disk models. (abridged)

astro-ph.GA↗