arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to V. Antonuccio-Delogu.
We study the propagation of relativistic jets originating from AGNs within the Interstellar/Intergalactic Medium of their host galaxies, and use it to build a model for the suppression of stellar formation within the expanding cocoon.
Weak lensing applied to deep optical images of clusters of galaxies provides a powerful tool to reconstruct the distribution of the gravitating mass associated to these structures. We use the shear signal extracted by an analysis of deep exposures of a region centered around the galaxy cluster Abell 209, at redshift z=0.2, to derive both a map of the projected mass distribution and an estimate of the total mass within a characteristic radius. We use a series of deep archival R-band images from CFHT-12k, covering an area of 0.3 deg^2. We determine the shear of background galaxy images using a new implementation of the modified Kaiser-Squires-Broadhurst pipeline for shear determination, which we has been tested against the ``Shear TEsting Program 1 and 2'' simulations. We use mass aperture statistics to produce maps of the 2 dimensional density distribution, and parametric fits using both Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) and singular-isothermal-sphere profiles to constrain the total mass. The projected mass distribution shows a pronounced asymmetry, with an elongated structure extending from the SE to the NW. This is in general agreement with the optical distribution previously found by other authors. A similar elongation was previously detected in the X-ray emission map, and in the distribution of galaxy colours. The circular NFW mass profile fit gives a total mass of M_{200} = 7.7^{+4.3}_{-2.7} 10^{14} solar masses inside the virial radius r_{200} = 1.8\pm 0.3 Mpc. The weak lensing profile reinforces the evidence for an elongated structure of Abell 209, as previously suggested by studies of the galaxy distribution and velocities.
We have performed a series of N-body/hydrodynamical (TreeSPH) simulations of clusters and groups of galaxies, selected from cosmological N-body simulations within a $Λ$CDM framework: these objects have been re-simulated at higher resolution to $z$=0, in order to follow also the dynamical, thermal and chemical input on to the ICM from stellar populations within galaxies. The simulations include metal dependent radiative cooling, star formation according to different IMFs, energy feedback as strong starburst-driven galactic super-winds, chemical evolution with non-instantaneous recycling of gas and heavy elements, effects of a meta-galactic UV field and thermal conduction in the ICM. In this Paper I of a series of three, we derive results, mainly at $z=0$, on the temperature and entropy profiles of the ICM, its X-ray luminosity, the cluster cold components (cold fraction as well as mass--to--light ratio) and the metal distribution between ICM and stars. In general, models with efficient super-winds, along with a top-heavy stellar IMF, are able to reproduce fairly well the observed $L_X-T$ relation, the entropy profiles and the cold fraction. Observed radial ICM temperature profiles can be matched, except for the gradual decline in temperature inside of $r\sim$~0.1$R_{\rm{vir}}$. Metal enrichment of the ICM gives rise to somewhat steep inner iron gradients; yet, the global level of enrichment compares well to observational estimates after correcting for the stars formed at late times at the base of the cooling flows; also the metal partition between stars and ICM gets into good agreement with observations.
We investigate the environmental dependence of galaxy population properties in a complete volume-limited sample of 91566 galaxies in the redshift range 0.05 <= z <= 0.095 and with M_r <= -20.0, selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 4. Our aim is to search for systematic variations in the properties of galaxies with the local galaxy density. In particular, we analize how the (u - r) color index and the morphological type of galaxies (the latter evaluated through the SDSS Eclass and FracDev parameters) are related to the environment and to the luminosity of galaxies, in order to find hints that can be related to the presence of a ''void'' galaxy population. Void galaxies are identified through a highly selective criterion, which takes also into account redshift and allows us to exclude from the sample all the galaxies that are not really close to the center of underdense regions. We study the (u - r) color distribution for galaxies in different luminosity bins, and we look for correlations of color with the environment, the luminosity, and the morphological type of the galaxies. We find that galaxies in underdense regions (voids) have lower luminosity (M_r > -21) and are bluer than cluster galaxies. The transition from overdense to underdense environments is smooth, the fraction of late-type galaxies decreases while the fraction of early-type galaxies increases smoothly from underdense to dense environments. We do not find any sudden transition in the galaxy properties with density, which, according to a suggestion by Peebles (2001), should mark the transition to a population of "void" galaxies in LCDM models. On the contrary, our results suggest a continuity of galaxy properties, from voids to clusters.
FLY is a parallel treecode which makes heavy use of the one-sided communication paradigm to handle the management of the tree structure. In its public version the code implements the equations for cosmological evolution, and can be run for different cosmological models. This reference guide describes the actual implementation of the algorithms of the public version of FLY, and suggests how to modify them to implement other types of equations (for instance the Newtonian ones)
We use the results of a high resolution N-body simulation to investigate the role of the environment on the formation and evolution of galaxy-sized halos. Starting from a set of constrained initial conditions, we have produced a final configuration hosting a double cluster in one octant and a large void extending over two octants of the simulation box. We present results for two statistics: the relationship between 1-D velocity dispersion and mass and the probability distribution of the spin parameter $P(λ)$. The \svm relationship is well reproduced by the Truncated Isothermal Sphere (TIS) model introduced by Shapiro et al. (1999), although the slope is different from the original prediction. A series of \svm relationships for different values of the anisotropy parameter $β$, obtained using the theoretical predictions by Lokas and Mamon (2001) for NFW density profiles are found to be only marginally consistent with the data. Using some properties of the equilibrium TIS models, we construct subsamples of {\em fiducial} equilibrium TIS halos from each of the three subregions, and we study their properties. For these halos, we do find an environmental dependence of their properties, in particular of the spin parameter distribution $P(λ)$. We study in more detail the TIS model, and we find new relationships between the truncation radius and other structural parameters. No gravitationally bound halo is found having a radius larger than the critical value for gravithermal instability for TIS halos (\rt $\ge 34.2 r_{0}$, where $r_{0}$ is the core radius of the TIS solution). We do however find a dependence of this relationship on the environment, like for the $P(λ)$ statistics. These facts hint at a possible rôle of tidal fields at determining the statistical properties of halos.
We present a code allowing to evolve three-dimensional self-gravitating collisionless systems with a large number of particles N >= 10^7. FLY (Fast Level-based N-bodY code) is a fully parallel code based on a tree algorithm. It adopts periodic boundary conditions implemented by means of the Ewald summation technique. FLY is based on the one-side communication paradigm and was originally developed on a CRAY T3E system using the SHMEM library and it was ported on SGI ORIGIN 2000 and on IBM SP. FLY (http://www.ct.astro.it/fly/) version 1.1 is an open source freely available code. FLY data output can be analysed with AstroMD, an analysis and visualization tool specifically designed to deal with the visualization and analysis of astrophysical data. AstroMD can manage different physical quantities. It can find out structures without well defined shape or symmetries, and perform quantitative calculations on selected regions. AstroMD (http://www.cineca.it/astromd) is a freely available code.
The code we describe (FLY) is a newly written code (using the tree N-body method), for three-dimensional self-gravitating collisionless systems evolution. FLY is a fully parallel code based on the tree Barnes-Hut algorithm and periodical boundary conditions are implemented by means of the Ewald summation technique. FLY is based on the one-side communication paradigm to share data among the processors, that access to remote private data avoiding any kind of synchronism. The code was originally developed on CRAY T3E system using the logically SHared MEMory access routines (SHMEM) but it runs also on SGI ORIGIN systems and on IBM SP by using the Low-Level Application Programming Interface routines (LAPI). This new code reaches good performance in all systems where it has been well-tested. This performance allows us today to consider the code FLY among the most powerful parallel codes for tree N-body simulations. The FLY version 1.1 is freely available on http://www.ct.astro.it/fly/ and it will be maintained and upgraded with new releases.
N-body codes to perform simulations of the origin and evolution of the Large Scale Structure of the Universe have improved significantly over the past decade both in terms of the resolution achieved and of reduction of the CPU time. However, state-of-the-art N-body codes hardly allow one to deal with particle numbers larger than a few 10^7, even on the largest parallel systems. In order to allow simulations with larger resolution, we have first re-considered the grouping strategy as described in Barnes (1990) (hereafter B90) and applied it with some modifications to our WDSH-PT (Work and Data SHaring - Parallel Tree) code. In the first part of this paper we will give a short description of the code adopting the Barnes and Hut algorithm \cite{barh86} (hereafter BH), and in particular of the memory and work distribution strategy applied to describe the {\it data distribution} on a CC-NUMA machine like the CRAY-T3E system. In the second part of the paper we describe the modification to the Barnes grouping strategy we have devised to improve the performance of the WDSH-PT code. We will use the property that nearby particles have similar interaction list. This idea has been checked in B90, where an interaction list is builded which applies everywhere within a cell C_{group} containing a little number of particles N_{crit}. B90 reuses this interaction list for each particle $ p \in C_{group}$ in the cell in turn. We will assume each particle p to have the same interaction list. Thus it has been possible to reduce the CPU time increasing the performances. This leads us to run simulations with a large number of particles (N ~ 10^7/10^9) in non-prohibitive times.
Over the past few years, the role of visualization for scientific purpose has grown up enormously. Astronomy makes an extended use of visualization techniques to analyze data, and scientific visualization has became a fundamental part of modern researches in Astronomy. With the evolution of high performance computers, numerical simulations have assumed a great role in the scientific investigation, allowing the user to run simulation with higher and higher resolution. Data produced in these simulations are often multi-dimensional arrays with several physical quantities. These data are very hard to manage and to analyze efficiently. Consequently the data analysis and visualization tools must follow the new requirements of the research. AstroMD is a tool for data analysis and visualization of astrophysical data and can manage different physical quantities and multi-dimensional data sets. The tool uses virtual reality techniques by which the user has the impression of travelling through a computer-based multi-dimensional model. AstroMD is a freely available tool for the whole astronomical community (http://www.cineca.it/astromd/).
We report the first detailed X-ray and optical observations of the medium-distant cluster A33 obtained with the Beppo-SAX satellite and with the UH 2.2m and Keck II telescopes at Mauna Kea. The information deduced from X-ray and optical imaging and spectroscopic data allowed us to identify the X-ray source 1SAXJ0027.2-1930 as the X-ray counterpart of the A33 cluster. The faint, $F_{2-10 keV} \approx 2.4 \times 10^{-13} \ergscm2$, X-ray source 1SAXJ0027.2-1930, $\sim 2$ arcmin away from the optical position of the cluster as given in the Abell catalogue, is identified with the central region of A33. Based on six cluster galaxy redshifts, we determine the redshift of A33, $z=0.2409$; this is lower than the value derived by Leir and Van Den Bergh (1977). The source X-ray luminosity, $L_{2-10 keV} = 7.7 \times 10^{43} \ergs$, and intracluster gas temperature, $T = 2.9$ keV, make this cluster interesting for cosmological studies of the cluster $L_X-T$ relation at intermediate redshifts. Two other X-ray sources in the A33 field are identified. An AGN at z$=$0.2274, and an M-type star, whose emission are blended to form an extended X-ray emission $\sim 4$ arcmin north of the A33 cluster. A third possibly point-like X-ray source detected $\sim 3$ arcmin north-west of A33 lies close to a spiral galaxy at z$=$0.2863 and to an elliptical galaxy at the same redshift as the cluster.
Using the results of a high mass resolution ($256^{3}$ particles) N-body simulation of a cluster-forming region, we study the statistic $σ_{v}-M$ for low mass halos (${\rm M} < 10^{12} {\rm M}_{\sun}$), and we compare it with three theoretical models. At the final redshift halos are well described by the Truncated Isothermal Sphere model recently introduced by Shapiro, Iliev & Raga (1999). We speculate that this is a consequence of the action of tidal fields on galaxy formation within clusters.
We present and discuss a method to identify substructures in combined angular-redshift samples of galaxies within Clusters. The method relies on the use of Discrete Wavelet Transform (hereafter DWT) and has already been applied to the analysis of the Coma cluster (Gambera et al. 1997). The main new ingredient of our method with respect to previous studies lies in the fact that we make use of a 3D data set rather than a 2D. We test the method on mock cluster catalogs with spatially localized substructures and on a N-body simulation. Our main conclusion is that our method is able to identify the existing substructures provided that: a) the subclumps are detached in part or all of the phase space, b) one has a statistically significant number of redshifts, increasing as the distance decreases due to redshift distortions; c) one knows {\it a priori} the scale on which substructures are to be expected. We have found that to allow an accurate recovery we must have both a significant number of galaxies ($\approx 200$ for clusters at z$\geq 0.4$ or about 800 at z$\leq$ 0.4) and a limiting magnitude for completeness $m_B=16$. The only true limitation to our method seems to be the necessity of knowing {\it a priori} the scale on which the substructure is to be found. This is an intrinsic drawback of the method and no improvement in numerical codes based on this technique could make up for it.
N-body algorithms for long-range unscreened interactions like gravity belong to a class of highly irregular problems whose optimal solution is a challenging task for present-day massively parallel computers. In this paper we describe a strategy for optimal memory and work distribution which we have applied to our parallel implementation of the Barnes & Hut (1986) recursive tree scheme on a Cray T3D using the CRAFT programming environment. We have performed a series of tests to find an " optimal data distribution " in the T3D memory, and to identify a strategy for the " Dynamic Load Balance " in order to obtain good performances when running large simulations (more than 10 million particles). The results of tests show that the step duration depends on two main factors: the data locality and the T3D network contention. Increasing data locality we are able to minimize the step duration if the closest bodies (direct interaction) tend to be located in the same PE local memory (contiguous block subdivison, high granularity), whereas the tree properties have a fine grain distribution. In a very large simulation, due to network contention, an unbalanced load arises. To remedy this we have devised an automatic work redistribution mechanism which provided a good Dynamic Load Balance at the price of an insignificant overhead.
Evidence for clustering within the Coma cluster is found by means of a multiscale analysis of the combined angular-redshift distribution. We have compiled a catalogue of 798 galaxy redshifts from published surveys from the region of the Coma cluster. We examine the presence of substructure and of voids at different scales ranging from $\sim 1 to \sim 16 h^{-1}$ Mpc, using subsamples of the catalogue, ranging from $cz=3000$ km/s to $cz=28000$ km/s. Our substructure detection method is based on the wavelet transform and on the segmentation analysis. The wavelet transform allows us to find out structures at different scales and the segmentation method allows us a quantitative statistical and morphological analysis of the sample. From the whole catalogue we select a subset of 320 galaxies, with redshifts between cz=5858 km/s and cz=8168 km/s that we identify as belonging to the central region of Coma and on which we have performed a deeper analysis, on scales ranging from $180 h^{-1}$ kpc to $1.44 h^{-1}$ Mpc. Our results are expressed in terms of the number of structures or voids and their sphericity for different values of the threshold detection and at all the scales investigated. According to our analysis, there is strong evidence for multiple hierarchical substructure, on scales ranging from a few hundreds of kpc to about $4 h^{-1}$ Mpc. The morphology of these substructures is rather spherical. On the scale of $720 h^{-1}$ kpc we find two main subclusters which where also found before, but our wavelet analysis shows even more substructures, whose redshift position is approximatively marked by these bright galaxies: NGC 4934 & 4840, 4889, 4898 & 4864, 4874 & 4839, 4927, 4875.
We solve numerically the equations of motion for the collapse of a shell of baryonic matter falling into the central regions of a cluster of galaxies, taking into account of the presence of the substructure inducing dynamical friction. The evolution of the expansion parameter a(t) of the perturbation is calculated in spherical systems. The effect of dynamical friction is to reduce the binding radius and the total mass accreted by the central regions. Using a peak density profile given by Bardeen et al. (1986) we show how the binding radius of the perturbation is modified by dinamical friction. We show how dynamical friction modifies the collapse parameter of the perturbation slowing down the collapse.
We describe a new parallel N-body code for cosmological simulations. The code is based on a work- and data sharing scheme, and is implemented within the Cray Research Corporation's CRAFT programming environment. Different data distribution schemes have been adopted for bodies' and tree's structures. Tests performed for two different types of initial distributions show that the performance scales almost ideally as a function of the size of the system and of the number of processors. We discuss the factors affecting the absolute speedup and how it can be increased with a better tree's data distribution scheme.
We reconsider the problem of the origin of Low-Surface-Brightness (LSB) galaxies within the standard Cold Dark Matter (CDM) cosmological model ($Ω=1, h=0.5$). Taking into account the effect of substructure on the collapse times of low overdensity peaks, we show that the abundance of these peaks is larger than previously expected because of the dragging caused by dynamical friction induced by the presence of small-scale substructure. The number density of these shallow, low-density peaks turns out to be in good agreement with the observed overdensity of the blue LSB galaxies found during recent surveys.