No Arabic abstract
We construct several Milky Way-like galaxy models containing a gas halo (as well as gaseous and stellar disks, a dark matter halo, and a stellar bulge) following either an isothermal or an NFW density profile with varying mass and initial spin. In addition, galactic winds associated with star formation are tested in some of the simulations. We evolve these isolated galaxy models using the GADGET-3 $N$-body/hydrodynamic simulation code, paying particular attention to the effects of the gas halo on the evolution. We find that the evolution of the models is strongly affected by the adopted gas halo component. The model without a gas halo shows an increasing star formation rate (SFR) at the beginning of the simulation for some hundreds of millions of years and then a continuously decreasing rate to the end of the run at 3 Gyr. On the other hand, the SFRs in the models with a gas halo emerge to be either relatively flat throughout the simulations or increasing over a gigayear and then decreasing to the end. The models with the more centrally concentrated NFW gas halo show overall higher SFRs than those with the isothermal gas halo of the equal mass. The gas accretion from the halo onto the disk also occurs more in the models with the NFW gas halo, however, this is shown to take place mostly in the inner part of the disk and not to contribute significantly to the star formation unless the gas halo has very high density at the central part. The rotation of a gas halo is found to make SFR lower in the model. The SFRs in the runs including galactic winds are found to be lower than the same runs but without winds. We conclude that the effects of a hot gaseous halo on the evolution of galaxies are generally too significant to be simply ignored, and expect that more hydrodynamical processes in galaxies could be understood through numerical simulations employing both gas disk and gas halo components.
Galaxy spins can be predicted from the initial conditions in the early Universe through the tidal tensor twist. In simulations, their directions are well preserved through cosmic time, consistent with expectations of angular momentum conservation. We report a $sim 3 sigma$ detection of correlation between observed oriented directions of galaxy angular momenta and their predictions based on the initial density field reconstructed from the positions of SDSS galaxies. The detection is driven by a group of spiral galaxies classified by the Galaxy Zoo as (anti-)clockwise, with a modest improvement from adding galaxies from MaNGA and SAMI surveys. This is the first such detection of the oriented galaxy spin direction, which opens a way to use measurements of galaxy spins to probe fundamental physics in the early Universe.
Generating pre-initial conditions (or particle loads) is the very first step to set up a cosmological N-body simulation. In this work, we revisit the numerical convergence of pre-initial conditions on dark matter halo properties using a set of simulations which only differs in initial particle loads, i.e. grid, glass, and the newly introduced capacity constrained Voronoi tessellation (CCVT). We find that the median halo properties agree fairly well (i.e. within a convergence level of a few per cent) among simulations running from different initial loads. We also notice that for some individual haloes cross-matched among different simulations, the relative difference of their properties sometimes can be several tens of per cent. By looking at the evolution history of these poorly converged haloes, we find that they are usually merging haloes or haloes have experienced recent merger events, and their merging processes in different simulations are out-of-sync, making the convergence of halo properties become poor temporarily. We show that, comparing to the simulation starting with an anisotropic grid load, the simulation with an isotropic CCVT load converges slightly better to the simulation with a glass load, which is also isotropic. Among simulations with different pre-initial conditions, haloes in higher density environments tend to have their properties converged slightly better. Our results confirm that CCVT loads behave as well as the widely used grid and glass loads at small scales, and for the first time we quantify the convergence of two independent isotropic particle loads (i.e. glass and CCVT) on halo properties.
Using a suite of simulations (Governato et al. 2010) which successfully produce bulgeless (dwarf) disk galaxies, we provide an analysis of their associated cold interstellar media (ISM) and stellar chemical abundance patterns. A preliminary comparison with observations is undertaken, in order to assess whether the properties of the cold gas and chemistry of the stellar components are recovered successfully. To this end, we have extracted the radial and vertical gas density profiles, neutral hydrogen velocity dispersion, and the power spectrum of structure within the ISM. We complement this analysis of the cold gas with a brief examination of the simulations metallicity distribution functions and the distribution of alpha-elements-to-iron.
The abundance and distribution of metals in galaxy clusters contains valuable information about their chemical history and evolution. By looking at how metallicity evolves with redshift, it is possible to constrain the different metal production channels. We use the C-EAGLE clusters, a sample of 30 high resolution ($m_{gas} simeq 1.8times 10^{6}$ M$_{odot}$) cluster zoom simulations, to investigate the redshift evolution of metallicity, with particular focus on the cluster outskirts. The early enrichment model, in which the majority of metals are produced in the core of cluster progenitors at high redshift, suggests that metals in cluster outskirts have not significantly evolved since $z=2$. With the C-EAGLE sample, we find reasonable agreement with the early enrichment model as there is very little scatter in the metallicity abundance at large radius across the whole sample, out to at least $z=2$. The exception is Fe for which the radial dependence of metallicity was found to evolve at low redshift as a result of being mainly produced by Type Ia supernovae, which are more likely to be formed at later times than core-collapse supernovae. We also found considerable redshift evolution of metal abundances in the cores of the C-EAGLE clusters which has not been seen in other simulations or observation based metallicity studies. Since we find this evolution to be driven by accretion of low metallicity gas, it suggests that the interaction between outflowing, AGN heated material and the surrounding gas is important for determining the core abundances in clusters.
We use $N$-body/smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of encounters between an early-type galaxy (ETG) and a late-type galaxy (LTG) to study the effects of hot halo gas on the evolution for a case with the mass ratio of the ETG to LTG of 2:1 and the closest approach distance of $sim$100 kpc. We find that the dynamics of the cold disk gas in the tidal bridge and the amount of the newly formed stars depend strongly on the existence of a gas halo. In the run of interacting galaxies not having a hot gas halo, the gas and stars accreted into the ETG do not include newly formed stars. However, in the run using the ETG with a gas halo and the LTG without a gas halo, a shock forms along the disk gas tidal bridge and induces star formation near the closest approach. The shock front is parallel to a channel along which the cold gas flows toward the center of the ETG. As a result, the ETG can accrete star-forming cold gas and newly born stars at and near its center. When both galaxies have hot gas halos, a shock is formed between the two gas halos somewhat before the closest approach. The shock hinders the growth of the cold gas bridge to the ETG and also ionizes it. Only some of the disk stars transfer through the stellar bridge. We conclude that the hot halo gas can give significant hydrodynamic effects during distant encounters.