Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

Weiguang Cui

Publications and source records attributed to Weiguang Cui.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
arXiv2023

The three hundred project: thermodynamical properties, shocks and gas dynamics in simulated galaxy cluster filaments and their surroundings

Using cosmological simulations of galaxy cluster regions from The Three Hundred project we study the nature of gas in filaments feeding massive clusters. By stacking the diffuse material of filaments throughout the cluster sample, we measure average gas properties such as density, temperature, pressure, entropy and Mach number and construct one-dimensional profiles for a sample of larger, radially-oriented filaments to determine their characteristic features as cosmological objects. Despite the similarity in velocity space between the gas and dark matter accretion patterns onto filaments and their central clusters, we confirm some differences, especially concerning the more ordered radial velocity dispersion of dark matter around the cluster and the larger accretion velocity of gas relative to dark matter in filaments. We also study the distribution of shocked gas around filaments and galaxy clusters, showing that the surrounding shocks allow an efficient internal transport of material, suggesting a laminar infall. The stacked temperature profile of filaments is typically colder towards the spine, in line with the cosmological rarefaction of matter. Therefore, filaments are able to isolate their inner regions, maintaining lower gas temperatures and entropy. Finally, we study the evolution of the gas density-temperature phase diagram of our stacked filament, showing that filamentary gas does not behave fully adiabatically through time but it is subject to shocks during its evolution, establishing a characteristic z = 0, entropy-enhanced distribution at intermediate distances from the spine of about 1 - 2 $h^{-1}$ Mpc for a typical galaxy cluster in our sample.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2023

The localization of galaxy groups in close proximity to galaxy clusters using cosmic web nodes

We investigate the efficacy of using the cosmic web nodes identified by the DisPerSE topological filament finder to systematically identify galaxy groups in the infall regions around massive clusters. The large random motions and infall velocities of galaxies in the regions around clusters complicate the detection and characterisation of substructures through normal group-finding algorithms. Yet understanding the co-location of galaxies within filaments and/or groups is a key part of understanding the role of environment on galaxy evolution, particularly in light of next-generation wide-field spectroscopic surveys. Here we use simulated massive clusters from TheThreeHundred collaboration and compare the derived group catalogues, (haloes with $σ_{v} > 300 h^{-1}$ km/s) with the critical points from DisPerSE, ran on haloes with more than 100 particles. We find that in 3D, 56\% of DisPerSE nodes are correctly identified as groups (purity) while 68\% of groups are identified as nodes (completeness). The fraction of matches increases with group mass and with distance from the host cluster centre. This rises to a completeness of 100\% for the most massive galaxy groups ($M>10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}$) in 3D, or 63\% when considering the projected 2D galaxy distribution. When a perfect match occurs between a cosmic web node and a galaxy group, the DisPerSE node density ($δ$) serves as an estimate of the group's mass, albeit with significant scatter. We conclude that the use of a cosmic filament finder shows promise as a useful and straightforward observational tool for disentangling substructure within the infall regions of massive clusters.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2023

Galaxy clusters morphology with Zernike polynomials: the first application on $\textit{Planck}$ Compton parameter maps

The study of the morphology of 2D projected maps of galaxy clusters is a suitable approach to infer, from real data, the dynamical state of those systems. We recently developed a new method to recover the morphological features in galaxy cluster maps which consists of an analytical modelling through the Zernike polynomials. After the first validation of this approach on a set of high-resolution mock maps of the Compton parameter, $y$, from hydrodynamically simulated galaxy clusters in THE THREE HUNDRED project, we apply the Zernike modelling on $y$-maps of local ($z < 0.1$) galaxy clusters observed by the $Planck$ satellite. With a single parameter collecting the main information of the Zernike modelling, we classify their morphology. A set of mock $Planck$-like $y$-maps, generated from THE THREE HUNDRED clusters, is also used to validate our indicator with a proper dynamical state classification. This approach allows us to test the efficiency of the Zernike morphological modelling in evaluating the dynamical population in the real $Planck$ sample.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2023

Impact of filaments on galaxy cluster properties in The Three Hundred simulation

Galaxy clusters and their filamentary outskirts reveal useful laboratories to test cosmological models and investigate Universe composition and evolution. Their environment, in particular the filaments of the Cosmic Web to which they are connected, plays an important role in shaping the properties of galaxy clusters. In this project, we analyse the gas filamentary structures present in 324 regions of The Three Hundred hydrodynamical simulation extracted with the DisPerSE filament finder. We estimate the number of gas filaments globally connected to several galaxy clusters, i.e. the connectivity k, with a mass range of $10^{13} \leq M_{200} \, h^{-1} \, M_{\odot} \leq 10^{15} $ at redshift $z=0$. We study the positive correlation between the connectivity and mass of galaxy clusters. Moreover, we explore the impact of filaments on the dynamical state of clusters, quantified by the degree of relaxation parameter $χ$.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2023

A persistent excess of galaxy-galaxy strong lensing observed in galaxy clusters

Previous studies have revealed that the estimated probability of galaxy-galaxy strong lensing in observed galaxy clusters exceeds the expectations from the $Λ$ Cold Dark Matter cosmological model by one order of magnitude. We aim to understand the origin of this excess by analyzing a larger set of simulated galaxy clusters and investigating how the theoretical expectations vary under different adopted prescriptions and numerical implementations of star formation and feedback in simulations. We perform a ray-tracing analysis of 324 galaxy clusters from the Three Hundred project, comparing the Gadget-X and Gizmo-Simba runs. These simulations, which start from the same initial conditions, are performed with different implementations of hydrodynamics and galaxy formation models tailored to match different observational properties of the Intra-Cluster-Medium and cluster galaxies. We find that galaxies in the Gizmo-Simba simulations develop denser stellar cores than their Gadget-X counterparts. Consequently, their probability for galaxy-galaxy strong lensing is higher by a factor of $\sim 3$. This increment is still insufficient to fill the gap with observations, as a discrepancy by a factor $\sim 4$ still persists. In addition, we find that several simulated galaxies have Einstein radii that are too large compared to observations. We conclude that a persistent excess of galaxy-galaxy strong lensing exists in observed galaxy clusters. The origin of this discrepancy with theoretical predictions is still unexplained in the framework of the cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. This might signal a hitherto unknown issue with either the simulation methods or our assumptions regarding the standard cosmological model.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2023

The Three Hundred: $M_{sub}-V_{circ}$ relation

In this study, we investigate a recent finding based on strong lensing observations, which suggests that the sub-halos observed in clusters exhibit greater compactness compared to those predicted by $Λ$CDM simulations. To address this discrepancy, we performed a comparative analysis by comparing the cumulative mass function of sub-halos and the $M_{\text{sub}}$-$V_{\text{circ}}$ relation between observed clusters and 324 simulated clusters from The Three Hundred project, focusing on re-simulations using GADGET-X and GIZMO-SIMBA baryonic models. The sub-halos' cumulative mass function of the GIZMO-SIMBA simulated clusters agrees with observations, while the GADGET-X simulations exhibit discrepancies in the lower sub-halo mass range possibly due to its strong SuperNova feedback. Both GADGET-X and GIZMO-SIMBA simulations demonstrate a redshift evolution of the sub-halo mass function and the $V_{max}$ function, with slightly fewer sub-halos observed at lower redshifts. Neither the GADGET-X nor GIZMO-SIMBA(albeit a little closer) simulated clusters' predictions for the $M_{\text{sub}}$-$V_{\text{circ}}$ relation align with the observational result. Further investigations on the correlation between sub-halo/halo properties and the discrepancy in the $M_{\text{sub}}$-$V_{\text{circ}}$ relation reveals that the sub-halo's half mass radius and galaxy stellar age, the baryon fraction and sub-halo distance from the cluster's centre, as well as the halo relaxation state play important roles on this relation. Nevertheless, we think it is still challenging in accurately reproducing the observed $M_{\text{sub}}$-$V_{\text{circ}}$ relation in our current hydrodynamic cluster simulation under the standard $Λ$CDM cosmology.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2023

SIMBA-C: An updated chemical enrichment model for galactic chemical evolution in the SIMBA simulation

We introduce a new chemical enrichment and stellar feedback model into GIZMO, using the SIMBA sub-grid models as a base. Based on the state-of-the-art chemical evolution model of Kobayashi et al., SIMBA-C tracks 34 elements from H$\rightarrow$Ge and removes SIMBA's instantaneous recycling approximation. Furthermore, we make some minor improvements to SIMBA's base feedback models. SIMBA-C provides significant improvements on key diagnostics such as the knee of the $z=0$ galaxy stellar mass function, the faint end of the main sequence, and the ability to track black holes in dwarf galaxies. SIMBA-C also matches better with recent observations of the mass-metallicity relation at $z=0,2$. By not assuming instantaneous recycling, SIMBA-C provides a much better match to galactic abundance ratio measures such as [O/Fe] and [N/O]. SIMBA-C thus opens up new avenues to constrain feedback models using detailed chemical abundance measures across cosmic time.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2023

Boundless baryons: how diffuse gas contributes to anisotropic tSZ signal around simulated Three Hundred clusters

Upcoming advances in galaxy surveys and cosmic microwave background data will enable measurements of the anisotropic distribution of diffuse gas in filaments and superclusters at redshift $z=1$ and beyond, observed through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect. These measurements will help distinguish between different astrophysical feedback models, account for baryons that appear to be 'missing' from the cosmic census, and present opportunities for using locally-anisotropic tSZ statistics as cosmological probes. This study seeks to guide such future measurements by analysing whether diffuse intergalactic gas is a major contributor to anisotropic tSZ signal in The Three Hundred Gizmo-Simba hydrodynamic simulations. We apply multiple different halo boundary and temperature criteria to divide concentrated from diffuse gas at $z=1$, then create mock Compton-$y$ maps for the separated components. The maps from 98 simulation snapshots are centred on massive galaxy clusters, oriented by the most prominent galaxy filament axis, and stacked. Results vary significantly depending on the definition used for diffuse gas, indicating that assumptions should be clearly defined when claiming observations of the warm-hot intergalactic medium. In all cases, the diffuse gas is important, contributing 25-60% of the tSZ signal in the far field ($>4 h^{-1}$ comoving Mpc) from the stacked clusters. The gas 1-2 virial radii from halo centres is especially key. Oriented stacking and environmental selections help to amplify the signal from the warm-hot intergalactic medium, which is aligned but less concentrated along the filament axis than the hot halo gas.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2023

The Three Hundred Project: the evolution of physical baryon profiles

The distribution of baryons provides a significant way to understand the formation of galaxy clusters by revealing the details of its internal structure and changes over time. In this paper, we present theoretical studies on the scaled profiles of physical properties associated with the baryonic components, including gas density, temperature, metallicity, pressure and entropy as well as stellar mass, metallicity and satellite galaxy number density in galaxy clusters from $z=4$ to $z=0$ by tracking their progenitors. These mass-complete simulated galaxy clusters are coming from THE THREE HUNDRED with two runs: GIZMO-SIMBA and Gadget-X. Through comparisons between the two simulations, and with observed profiles which are generally available at low redshift, we find that (1) the agreements between the two runs and observations are mostly at outer radii $r \gtrsim 0.3r_{500}$, in line with the self-similarity assumption. While Gadget-X shows better agreements with the observed gas profiles in the central regions compared to GIZMO-SIMBA; (2) the evolution trends are generally consistent between the two simulations with slightly better consistency at outer radii. In detail, the gas density profile shows less discrepancy than the temperature and entropy profiles at high redshift. The differences in the cluster centre and gas properties imply different behaviours of the AGN models between Gadget-X and GIZMO-SIMBA, with the latter, maybe too strong for this cluster simulation. The high-redshift difference may be caused by the star formation and feedback models or hydrodynamics treatment, which requires observation constraints and understanding.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2023

Galaxy pairs in The Three Hundred simulations II: studying bound ones and identifying them via machine learning

Using the data set of The Three Hundred project, i.e. 324 hydrodynamical resimulations of cluster-sized haloes and the regions of radius 15 $h^{-1}$Mpc around them, we study galaxy pairs in high-density environments. By projecting the galaxies' 3D coordinates onto a 2D plane, we apply observational techniques to find galaxy pairs. Based on a previous theoretical study on galaxy groups in the same simulations, we are able to classify the observed pairs into "true" or "false", depending on whether they are gravitationally bound or not. We find that the fraction of true pairs (purity) crucially depends on the specific thresholds used to find the pairs, ranging from around 30 to more than 80 per cent in the most restrictive case. Nevertheless, in these very restrictive cases, we see that the completeness of the sample is low, failing to find a significant number of true pairs. Therefore, we train a machine learning algorithm to help us to identify these true pairs based on the properties of the galaxies that constitute them. With the aid of the machine learning model trained with a set of properties of all the objects, we show that purity and completeness can be boosted significantly using the default observational thresholds. Furthermore, this machine learning model also reveals the properties that are most important when distinguishing true pairs, mainly the size and mass of the galaxies, their spin parameter, gas content and shape of their stellar components.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2023

How baryons affect halos and large-scale structure: a unified picture from the Simba simulation

Using the state-of-the-art suite of hydrodynamic simulations Simba, as well as its dark-matter-only counterpart, we study the impact of the presence of baryons and of different stellar/AGN feedback mechanisms on large-scale structure, halo density profiles, and on the abundance of different baryonic phases within halos and in the intergalactic medium (IGM). The unified picture that emerges from our analysis is that the main physical drivers shaping the distribution of matter at all scales are star formation-driven galactic outflows at $z>2$ for lower mass halos and AGN jets at $z<2$ in higher mass halos. Feedback suppresses the baryon mass function with time relative to the halo mass function, and it even impacts the halo mass function itself at the ~20% level, particularly evacuating the centres and enhancing dark matter just outside halos. At early epochs baryons pile up in the centres of halos, but by late epochs and particularly in massive systems gas has mostly been evacuated from within the inner halo. AGN jets are so efficient at such evacuation that at low redshifts the baryon fraction within $\sim 10^{12}-10^{13} \, \rm M_{\odot}$ halos is only 25% of the cosmic baryon fraction, mostly in stars. The baryon fraction enclosed in a sphere around such halos approaches the cosmic value $Ω_{\rm b}/Ω_{\rm m}$ only at 10-20 virial radii. As a result, 87% of the baryonic mass in the Universe lies in the IGM at $z=0$, with 67% being in the form of warm-hot IGM ($T>10^5 \, \rm K$).

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2023

The Evolution and Mass Dependence of Galaxy Cluster Pressure Profiles at 0.05 $\le z \le$ 0.60 and $4 \times 10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}$ $\le \textrm{M}_{500} \le 30 \times 10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}$

We have combined X-ray observations from Chandra with Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect data from Planck and Bolocam to measure intra-cluster medium pressure profiles from 0.03R$_{500}$ $\le$ R $\le$ 5R$_{500}$ for a sample of 21 low-$z$ galaxy clusters with a median redshift $\langle z \rangle = 0.08$ and a median mass $\langle \textrm{M}_{500} \rangle = 6.1 \times 10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}$ and a sample of 19 mid-$z$ galaxy clusters with $\langle z \rangle = 0.50$ and $\langle \textrm{M}_{500} \rangle = 10.6 \times 10^{14}$ M$_{\odot}$. The mean scaled pressure in the low-$z$ sample is lower at small radii and higher at large radii, a trend that is accurately reproduced in similarly selected samples from The300 simulations. This difference appears to be primarily due to dynamical state at small radii, evolution at intermediate radii, and a combination of evolution and mass dependence at large radii. Furthermore, the overall flattening of the mean scaled pressure profile in the low-$z$ sample compared to the mid-$z$ sample is consistent with expectations due to differences in mass accretion rate and the fractional impact of feedback mechanisms. In agreement with previous studies, the fractional scatter about the mean scaled pressure profile reaches a minimum of $\simeq 20$ per cent near 0.5R$_{500}$. This scatter is consistent between the low-$z$ and mid-$z$ samples at all radii, suggesting it is not strongly impacted by sample selection, and this general behavior is reproduced in The300 simulations. Finally, analytic functions that approximately describe the mass and redshift trends in mean pressure profile shape are provided.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2023

The Physical Nature of Circumgalactic Medium Absorbers in Simba

We study the nature of the low-redshift CGM in the Simba cosmological simulations as traced by ultraviolet absorption lines around galaxies in bins of stellar mass ($M_\star>10^{10}M_\odot$) for star-forming, green valley and quenched galaxies at impact parameters $r_\perp\leq 1.25r_{200}$. We generate synthetic spectra for HI, MgII, CII, SiIII, CIV, and OVI, fit Voigt profiles to obtain line properties, and estimate the density, temperature, and metallicity of the absorbing gas. We find that CGM absorbers are most abundant around star forming galaxies with $M_\star < 10^{11}M_\odot$, while the abundance of green valley galaxies show similar behaviour to those of quenched galaxies, suggesting that the CGM "quenches" before star formation ceases. HI absorbing gas exists across a broad range of cosmic phases (condensed gas, diffuse gas, hot halo gas and Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium), while essentially all low-ionisation metal absorption arises from condensed gas. OVI absorbers are split between hot halo gas and the WHIM. The fraction of collisionally ionised CGM absorbers is $\sim 25-55\%$ for CIV and $\sim 80-95\%$ for OVI, depending on stellar mass and impact parameter. In general, the highest column density absorption features for each ion arise from dense gas. Satellite gas, defined as that within $10r_{1/2,\star},$ contributes $\sim 3\%$ of overall HI absorption but $\sim 30\%$ of MgII absorption, with the fraction from satellites decreasing with increasing ion excitation energy.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2022

Effects of Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback on Cold Gas Depletion and Quenching of Central Galaxies

We investigate the influence of active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback on the galaxy cold gas content and its connection to galaxy quenching in three hydrodynamical simulations of Illustris, IllustrisTNG and SIMBA. By comparing to the observed atomic and molecular neutral hydrogen measurements for central galaxies, we find that Illustris over-predicts the cold gas masses in star-forming galaxies and significantly under-predicts them for quenched galaxies. IllustrisTNG performs better in this comparison than Illustris, but quenched galaxies retain too much cold gas compared with observations. SIMBA shows good agreement with observations, by depleting the global cold gas reservoir for quenched galaxies. We find that the discrepancies in IllustrisTNG are caused by its weak kinetic AGN feedback that only redistributes the cold gas from the inner disks to the outer regions and reduces the inner cold gas densities. It agrees with observations much better when only the cold gas within the stellar disk is considered to infer the star formation rates. From dependences of cold gas reservoir on the black hole mass and Eddington ratio, we find that the cumulative energy release during the black hole growth is the dominant reason for the cold gas depletion and thus the galaxy quenching. We further measure the central stellar surface density within 1 kpc ($Σ_1$) for the high-resolution run of IllustrisTNG and find a tight correlation between $Σ_1$ and black hole mass. It suggests that the observed decreasing trend of cold gas mass with $Σ_1$ is also a reflection of the black hole growth.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2022

A study of the hydrostatic mass bias dependence and evolution within The Three Hundred clusters

We use a set of about 300 simulated clusters from The Three Hundred Project to calculate their hydrostatic masses and evaluate the associated bias by comparing them with the true cluster mass. Over a redshift range from 0.07 to 1.3, we study the dependence of the hydrostatic bias on redshift, concentration, mass growth, dynamical state, mass, and halo shapes. We find almost no correlation between the bias and any of these parameters. However, there is a clear evidence that the scatter of the mass-bias distribution is larger for low-concentrated objects, high mass growth, and more generically for disturbed systems. Moreover, we carefully study the evolution of the bias of twelve clusters throughout a major-merger event. We find that the hydrostatic-mass bias follows a particular evolution track along the merger process: to an initial significant increase of the bias recorded at the begin of merger, a constant plateaus follows until the end of merge, when there is a dramatic decrease in the bias before the cluster finally become relaxed again. This large variation of the bias is in agreement with the large scatter of the hydrostatic bias for dynamical disturbed clusters. These objects should be avoided in cosmological studies because their exact relaxation phase is difficult to predict, hence their mass bias cannot be trivially accounted for.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2022

Hybrid analytic and machine-learned baryonic property insertion into galactic dark matter haloes

While cosmological dark matter-only simulations relying solely on gravitational effects are comparably fast to compute, baryonic properties in simulated galaxies require complex hydrodynamic simulations that are computationally costly to run. We explore the merging of an extended version of the equilibrium model, an analytic formalism describing the evolution of the stellar, gas, and metal content of galaxies, into a machine learning framework. In doing so, we are able to recover more properties than the analytic formalism alone can provide, creating a high-speed hydrodynamic simulation emulator that populates galactic dark matter haloes in N-body simulations with baryonic properties. While there exists a trade-off between the reached accuracy and the speed advantage this approach offers, our results outperform an approach using only machine learning for a subset of baryonic properties. We demonstrate that this novel hybrid system enables the fast completion of dark matter-only information by mimicking the properties of a full hydrodynamic suite to a reasonable degree, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of hybrid versus machine learning-only frameworks. In doing so, we offer an acceleration of commonly deployed simulations in cosmology.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2022

Machine Learning methods to estimate observational properties of galaxy clusters in large volume cosmological N-body simulations

In this paper we study the applicability of a set of supervised machine learning (ML) models specifically trained to infer observed related properties of the baryonic component (stars and gas) from a set of features of dark matter only cluster-size halos. The training set is built from THE THREE HUNDRED project which consists of a series of zoomed hydrodynamical simulations of cluster-size regions extracted from the 1 Gpc volume MultiDark dark-matter only simulation (MDPL2). We use as target variables a set of baryonic properties for the intra cluster gas and stars derived from the hydrodynamical simulations and correlate them with the properties of the dark matter halos from the MDPL2 N-body simulation. The different ML models are trained from this database and subsequently used to infer the same baryonic properties for the whole range of cluster-size halos identified in the MDPL2. We also test the robustness of the predictions of the models against mass resolution of the dark matter halos and conclude that their inferred baryonic properties are rather insensitive to their DM properties which are resolved with almost an order of magnitude smaller number of particles. We conclude that the ML models presented in this paper can be used as an accurate and computationally efficient tool for populating cluster-size halos with observational related baryonic properties in large volume N-body simulations making them more valuable for comparison with full sky galaxy cluster surveys at different wavelengths. We make the best ML trained model publicly available.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2022

A Deep Learning Approach to Infer Galaxy Cluster Masses from Planck Compton$-y$ parameter maps

Galaxy clusters are useful laboratories to investigate the evolution of the Universe, and accurately measuring their total masses allows us to constrain important cosmological parameters. However, estimating mass from observations that use different methods and spectral bands introduces various systematic errors. This paper evaluates the use of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to reliably and accurately infer the masses of galaxy clusters from the Compton-y parameter maps provided by the Planck satellite. The CNN is trained with mock images generated from hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy clusters, with Planck's observational limitations taken into account. We observe that the CNN approach is not subject to the usual observational assumptions, and so is not affected by the same biases. By applying the trained CNNs to the real Planck maps, we find cluster masses compatible with Planck measurements within a 15% bias. Finally, we show that this mass bias can be explained by the well known hydrostatic equilibrium assumption in Planck masses, and the different parameters in the Y500-M500 scaling laws. This work highlights that CNNs, supported by hydrodynamic simulations, are a promising and independent tool for estimating cluster masses with high accuracy, which can be extended to other surveys as well as to observations in other bands.

astro-ph.CO↗