No Arabic abstract
We use three different cosmological dark matter simulations to study how the orientation of the angular momentum vector (AM) in dark matter haloes evolve with time. We find that haloes in this kind of simulations are constantly affected by a spurious change of mass, which translates into an artificial change in the orientation of the AM. After removing the haloes affected by artificial mass change, we found that the change in the orientation of the AM vector is correlated with time. The change in its angle and direction (i.e. the angle subtended by the AM vector in two consecutive timesteps) that affect the AM vector has a dependence on the change of mass that affects a halo, the time elapsed in which the change of mass occurs and the halo mass. We create a Monte-Carlo simulation that reproduces the change of angle and direction of the AM vector. We reproduce the angular separation of the AM vector since a look back time of 8.5 Gyrs to today ( $rm alpha$) with an accuracy of approximately 0.05 in $rm cos(alpha)$. We are releasing this Monte-Carlo simulation together with this publication. We also create a Monte Carlo simulation that reproduces the change of the AM modulus. We find that haloes in denser environments display the most dramatic evolution in their AM direction, as well as haloes with a lower specific AM modulus. These relations could be used to improve the way we follow the AM vector in low-resolution simulations.
We study the empirical relation between an astronomical objects angular momentum $J$ and mass $M$, $J=beta M^alpha$, the $J-M$ relation, using N-body simulations. In particular, we investigate the time evolution of the $J-M$ relation to study how the initial power spectrum and cosmological model affect this relation, and to test two popular models of its origin - mechanical equilibrium and tidal torque theory. We find that in the $Lambda$CDM model, $alpha$ starts with a value of $sim 1.5$ at high redshift $z$, increases monotonically, and finally reaches $5/3$ near $z=0$, whereas $beta$ evolves linearly with time in the beginning, reaches a maximum and decreases, and stabilizes finally. A three-regime scheme is proposed to understand this newly observed picture. We show that the tidal torque theory accounts for this time evolution behaviour in the linear regime, whereas $alpha=5/3$ comes from the virial equilibrium of haloes. The $J-M$ relation in the linear regime contains the information of the power spectrum and cosmological model. The $J-M$ relations for haloes in different environments and with different merging histories are also investigated to study the effects of a halos non-linear evolution. An updated and more complete understanding of the $J-M$ relation is thus obtained.
For the last 30 years many observational and theoretical evidences have shown that galaxy clusters are not spherical objects, and that their shape is much better described by a triaxial geometry. With the advent of multi-wavelength data of increasing quality, triaxial investigations of galaxy clusters is gathering a growing interest from the community, especially in the time of precision cosmology. In this work, we aim to provide the first statistically significant predictions in the unexplored mass range above 3x10^14 Mo/h, using haloes from two redshifts (z=0 and z=1) of the Millennium XXL simulation. The size of this cosmological dark matter only simulation (4.1 Gpc) allows the formation of a statistically significant number of massive cluster scale haloes (about 500 with M>2x10^15 Mo/h and 780000 with M>10^14 Mo/h). Besides, we aim to extend this investigation to lower masses in order to look for universal predictions across nearly six orders of magnitude in mass, from 10^10 to almost 10^16 Mo/h. For this purpose we use the SBARBINE simulations, allowing to model haloes of masses starting from 10^10 Mo/h. We use an elliptical overdensity method to select haloes and compute the shapes of the unimodal ones (approximately 50%), while we discard the unrelaxed. The minor to major and intermediate to major axis ratio are found to be well described by simple functional forms. For a given mass we can fully characterize the shape of a halo and give predictions about the distribution of axis ratios for a given cosmology and redshift. Moreover, these results are in some disagreement with the findings of Jing & Suto (2002) which are widely used in the community even though they have to be extrapolated far beyond their original mass range. This recipe is made available to the community in this paper and in a dedicated web page.
We have analyzed high resolution N-body simulations of dark matter halos, focusing specifically on the evolution of angular momentum. We find that not only is individual particle angular momentum not conserved, but the angular momentum of radial shells also varies over the age of the Universe by up to factors of a few. We find that torques from external structure are the most likely cause for this distribution shift. Since the model of adiabatic contraction that is often applied to model the effects of galaxy evolution on the dark-matter density profile in a halo assumes angular momentum conservation, this variation implies that there is a fundamental limit on the possible accuracy of the adiabatic contraction model in modeling the response of DM halos to the growth of galaxies.
Galaxy-galaxy weak lensing is a direct probe of the mean matter distribution around galaxies. The depth and sky coverage of the CFHT Legacy Survey yield statistically significant galaxy halo mass measurements over a much wider range of stellar masses ($10^{8.75}$ to $10^{11.3} M_{odot}$) and redshifts ($0.2 < z < 0.8$) than previous weak lensing studies. At redshift $z sim 0.5$, the stellar-to-halo mass ratio (SHMR) reaches a maximum of $4.0pm0.2$ percent as a function of halo mass at $sim 10^{12.25} M_{odot}$. We find, for the first time from weak lensing alone, evidence for significant evolution in the SHMR: the peak ratio falls as a function of cosmic time from $4.5 pm 0.3$ percent at $z sim 0.7$ to $3.4 pm 0.2$ percent at $z sim 0.3$, and shifts to lower stellar mass haloes. These evolutionary trends are dominated by red galaxies, and are consistent with a model in which the stellar mass above which star formation is quenched downsizes with cosmic time. In contrast, the SHMR of blue, star-forming galaxies is well-fit by a power law that does not evolve with time. This suggests that blue galaxies form stars at a rate that is balanced with their dark matter accretion in such a way that they evolve along the SHMR locus. The redshift dependence of the SHMR can be used to constrain the evolution of the galaxy population over cosmic time.
We obtain predictions for the properties of cold dark matter annihilation radiation using high resolution hydrodynamic zoom-in cosmological simulations of Milky Way-like galaxies (APOSTLE project) carried out as part of the Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments (EAGLE) programme. Galactic halos in the simulation have significantly different properties from those assumed in the standard halo model often used in dark matter detection studies. The formation of the galaxy causes a contraction of the dark matter halo, whose density profile develops a steeper slope than the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profile between $rapprox1.5$ kpc and $rapprox10$ kpc. At smaller radii, $rlesssim1.5$ kpc, the halos develop a flatter than NFW slope. This unexpected feature may be specific to our particular choice of subgrid physics model but nevertheless the dark matter density profiles agree within 30% as the mass resolution is increased by a factor 150. The inner regions of the halos are almost perfectly spherical (axis ratios $b/a > 0.97$ within $r=1$ kpc) and there is no offset larger than 45 pc between the centre of the stellar distribution and the centre of the dark halo. The morphology of the predicted dark matter annihilation radiation signal is in broad agreement with $gamma$-ray observations at large Galactic latitudes ($bgtrsim3^circ$). At smaller angles, the inferred signal in one of our four galaxies is similar to that which is observed but it is significantly weaker in the other three.