Precision cosmology has recently triggered new attention on the topic of approximate methods for the clustering of matter on large scales, whose foundations date back to the period from the late ...1960s to early 1990s. Indeed, although the prospect of reaching sub-percent accuracy in the measurement of clustering poses a challenge even to full N-body simulations, an accurate estimation of the covariance matrix of clustering statistics, not to mention the sampling of parameter space, requires usage of a large number (hundreds in the most favourable cases) of simulated (mock) galaxy catalogs. Combination of few N-body simulations with a large number of realizations performed with approximate methods gives the most promising approach to solve these problems with a reasonable amount of resources. In this paper I review this topic, starting from the foundations of the methods, then going through the pioneering efforts of the 1990s, and finally presenting the latest extensions and a few codes that are now being used in present-generation surveys and thoroughly tested to assess their performance in the context of future surveys.
The forthcoming generation of galaxy redshift surveys will sample the large-scale structure of the Universe over unprecedented volumes with high-density tracers. This advancement will make robust ...measurements of three-point clustering statistics possible. In preparation for this improvement, we investigate how several methodological choices can influence inferences based on the bispectrum about galaxy bias and shot noise. We first measure the real-space bispectrum of dark-matter haloes extracted from 298 N-body simulations covering a volume of approximately 1000Gpc3. We then fit a series of theoretical models based on tree-level perturbation theory to the numerical data. To achieve this, we estimate the covariance matrix of the measurement errors by using 10,000 mock catalogues generated with the PINOCCHIO code. We study how the model constraints are influenced by the binning strategy for the bispectrum configurations and by the form of the likelihood function. We also use Bayesian model-selection techniques to single out the optimal theoretical description of our data. We find that a three-parameter bias model combined with Poissonian shot noise is necessary to model the halo bispectrum up to scales of kmax≲0.08Mpc-1, although fitting formulae that relate the bias parameters can be helpful to reduce the freedom of the model without compromising accuracy. Our data clearly disfavour local Eulerian and local Lagrangian bias models and do not require corrections to Poissonian shot noise. We anticipate that model-selection diagnostics will be particularly useful to extend the analysis to smaller scales as, in this case, the number of model parameters will grow significantly large.
ABSTRACT
We present cosmological zoom-in hydrodynamical simulations for the formation of disc galaxies, implementing dust evolution and dust promoted cooling of hot gas. We couple an improved version ...of our previous treatment of dust evolution, which adopts the two-size approximation to estimate the grain-size distribution, with the MUPPI star formation and feedback subresolution model. Our dust evolution model follows carbon and silicate dust separately. To distinguish differences induced by the chaotic behaviour of simulations from those genuinely due to different simulation set-up, we run each model six times, after introducing tiny perturbations in the initial conditions. With this method, we discuss the role of various dust-related physical processes and the effect of a few possible approximations adopted in the literature. Metal depletion and dust cooling affect the evolution of the system, causing substantial variations in its stellar, gas, and dust content. We discuss possible effects on the Spectral Energy Distribution of the significant variations of the size distribution and chemical composition of grains, as predicted by our simulations during the evolution of the galaxy. We compare dust surface density, dust-to-gas ratio, and small-to-large grain mass ratio as a function of galaxy radius and gas metallicity predicted by our fiducial run with recent observational estimates for three disc galaxies of different masses. The general agreement is good, in particular taking into account that we have not adjusted our model for this purpose.
It has been widely claimed that several lines of observational evidence point towards a ‘downsizing’ of the process of galaxy formation over cosmic time. This behaviour is sometimes termed ...‘antihierarchical’, and contrasted with the ‘bottom-up’ (small objects form first) assembly of the dark matter structures in cold dark matter (CDM) models. In this paper, we address three different kinds of observational evidence that have been described as ‘downsizing’: the stellar mass assembly (i.e. more massive galaxies assemble at higher redshift with respect to low-mass ones), star formation rate (SFR) (i.e. the decline of the specific star formation rate is faster for more massive systems) and the ages of the stellar populations in local galaxies (i.e. more massive galaxies host older stellar populations). We compare a broad compilation of available data sets with the predictions of three different semi-analytic models of galaxy formation within the ΛCDM framework. In the data, we see only weak evidence at best of ‘downsizing’ in stellar mass and in SFR. Despite the different implementations of the physical recipes, the three models agree remarkably well in their predictions. We find that, when observational errors on stellar mass and SFR are taken into account, the models acceptably reproduce the evolution of massive galaxies (M > 1011 M⊙ in stellar mass), over the entire redshift range that we consider (0 ≲z≲ 4). However, lower mass galaxies, in the stellar mass range 109–1011 M⊙, are formed too early in the models and are too passive at late times. Thus, the models do not correctly reproduce the downsizing trend in stellar mass or the archaeological downsizing, while they qualitatively reproduce the mass-dependent evolution of the SFR. We demonstrate that these discrepancies are not solely due to a poor treatment of satellite galaxies but are mainly connected to the excessively efficient formation of central galaxies in high-redshift haloes with circular velocities ∼100–200 km s−1. We conclude that some physical processes operating on these mass scales – most probably star formation and/or supernova feedback – are not yet properly treated in these models.
Abstract
We present a joint likelihood analysis of the halo power spectrum and bispectrum in real space. We take advantage of a large set of numerical simulations and of an even larger set of halo ...mock catalogs to provide a robust estimate of the covariance properties. We derive constraints on bias and cosmological parameters assuming a theoretical model from perturbation theory at one-loop for the power spectrum and tree-level for the bispectrum. By means of the Deviance Information Criterion, we select a reference bias model dependent on seven parameters that can describe the data up to
k
max,P
= 0.3
h
Mpc
-1
for the power spectrum and
k
max,B
= 0.09
h
Mpc
-1
for the bispectrum at redshift
z
= 1. This model is able to accurately recover three selected cosmological parameters even for the rather extreme total simulation volume of 1000
h
-3
Gpc
3
. With the same tools, we study how relations among bias parameters can improve the fit while reducing the parameter space. In addition, we compare common approximations to the covariance matrix against the full covariance estimated from the mocks, and quantify the (non-negligible) effect of ignoring the cross-covariance between the two statistics. Finally, we explore different selection criteria for the triangular configurations to include in the analysis, showing that excluding nearly equilateral triangles rather than simply imposing a fixed maximum
k
max,B
on all triangle sides can lead to a better exploitation of the information contained in the bispectrum.
We present the Model for the Rise of Galaxies and Active Nuclei (morgana), a new code for the formation and evolution of galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Starting from the merger trees of ...dark matter (DM) haloes and a model for the evolution of substructure within the haloes, the complex physics of baryons is modelled with a set of state-of-the-art models that describe the mass, metal and energy flows between the various components (baryonic halo, bulge, disc) and phases (cold and hot gas, stars) of a galaxy. These flows are then numerically integrated to produce predictions for the evolution of galaxies. The processes of shock-heating and cooling, star formation, feedback, galactic winds and superwinds, accretion on to black holes and AGN feedback are described by new models. In particular, the evolution of the halo gas explicitly follows the thermal and kinetic energies of the hot and cold phases, while star formation and feedback follow the results of the multiphase model recently proposed by Monaco. The increased level of sophistication of these models allows to move from a phenomenological description of gas physics, based on simple scalings with the depth of the DM halo potential, towards a fully physically motivated one. We deem that this is fully justified by the level of maturity and rough convergence reached by the latest versions of numerical and semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. The comparison of the predictions of morgana with a basic set of galactic data reveals from the one hand an overall rough agreement, and from the other hand highlights a number of well- or less-known problems: (i) producing the cut-off of the luminosity function requires to force the quenching of the late cooling flows by AGN feedback, (ii) the normalization of the Tully-Fisher relation of local spirals cannot be recovered unless the DM haloes are assumed to have a very low concentration, (iii) the mass function of H i gas is not easily fitted at small masses, unless a similarly low concentration is assumed, (iv) there is an excess of small elliptical galaxies at z= 0. These discrepancies, more than the points of agreement with data, give important clues on the missing ingredients of galaxy formation.
We implement novel numerical models of AGN feedback in the SPH code gadget-3, where the energy from a supermassive black hole (BH) is coupled to the surrounding gas in the kinetic form. Gas particles ...lying inside a bi-conical volume around the BH are imparted a one-time velocity (10 000 km s−1) increment. We perform hydrodynamical simulations of isolated cluster (total mass 1014 h
−1 M⊙), which is initially evolved to form a dense cool core, having central T ≤ 106 K. A BH resides at the cluster centre, and ejects energy. The feedback-driven fast wind undergoes shock with the slower moving gas, which causes the imparted kinetic energy to be thermalized. Bipolar bubble-like outflows form propagating radially outward to a distance of a few 100 kpc. The radial profiles of median gas properties are influenced by BH feedback in the inner regions (r < 20–50 kpc). BH kinetic feedback, with a large value of the feedback efficiency, depletes the inner cool gas and reduces the hot gas content, such that the initial cool core of the cluster is heated up within a time 1.9 Gyr, whereby the core median temperature rises to above 107 K, and the central entropy flattens. Our implementation of BH thermal feedback (using the same efficiency as kinetic), within the star formation model, cannot do this heating, where the cool core remains. The inclusion of cold gas accretion in the simulations produces naturally a duty cycle of the AGN with a periodicity of 100 Myr.
Recent inspections of local available data suggest that the almost linear relation between the stellar mass of spheroids (M
sph) and the mass of the super massive black holes (BHs), residing at their ...centres, shows a break below M
sph ∼ 1010 M⊙, with a steeper, about quadratic relation at smaller masses. We investigate the physical mechanisms responsible for the change in slope of this relation, by comparing data with the results of the semi-analytic model of galaxy formation morgana, which already predicted such a break in its original formulation. We find that the change of slope is mostly induced by effective stellar feedback in star-forming bulges. The shape of the relation is instead quite insensitive to other physical mechanisms connected to BH accretion such as disc instabilities, galaxy mergers, active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback, or even the exact modelling of accretion on to the BH, direct or through a reservoir of low angular momentum gas. Our results support a scenario where most stars form in the disc component of galaxies and are carried to bulges through mergers and disc instabilities, while accretion on to BHs is connected to star formation in the spheroidal component. Therefore, a model of stellar feedback that produces stronger outflows in star-forming bulges than in discs will naturally produce a break in the scaling relation. Our results point to a form of co-evolution especially at lower masses, below the putative break, mainly driven by stellar feedback rather than AGN feedback.
We measure and quantify properties of galactic outflows and diffuse gas at z ≥ 1 in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. Our novel subresolution model, Multi-Phase Particle Integrator (MUPPI), ...implements supernova feedback using fully local gas properties, where the wind velocity and mass loading are not given as input. We find the following trends at z = 2 by analysing central galaxies having a stellar mass higher than 109 M⊙. The outflow velocity and mass outflow rate (
$\dot{M}_{\rm out}$
) exhibit positive correlations with galaxy mass and with the star formation rate (SFR). However, most of the relations present a large scatter. The outflow mass loading factor (η) is between 0.2 and 10. The comparison effective model generates a constant outflow velocity, and a negative correlation of η with halo mass. The number fraction of galaxies where outflow is detected decreases at lower redshifts, but remains more than 80 per cent over z = 1–5. The outflow velocity correlation with SFR becomes flatter at z = 1, and η displays a negative correlation with halo mass in massive galaxies. Our study demonstrates that both the MUPPI and effective models produce significant outflows at ∼1/10 of the virial radius; at the same time shows that the properties of outflows generated can be different from the input speed and mass loading in the effective model. Our MUPPI model, using local properties of gas in the subresolution recipe, is able to develop galactic outflows whose properties correlate with global galaxy properties, and consistent with observations.
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