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The matter density field at z ∼ 6 is very challenging to probe. One of the traditional probes of the low density intergalactic medium that works successfully at lower redshifts is the Lyα forest in quasar spectra. However, at the end of reionization, the residual neutral hydrogen usually creates saturated absorption, thus much of the information about the gas density is lost. Luckily, in a quasar proximity zone, the ionizing radiation is exceptionally intense, thus creating a large region with nonzero transmitted flux. In this study we use the synthetic spectra from simulations to investigate how to recover the density fluctuations inside the quasar proximity zones. We show that, under ideal conditions, the density can be recovered accurately with a small scatter. We also discuss how systematics such as the quasar continuum fitting and reionization models affect the results. This study shows that by analyzing the absorption features inside quasar proximity zones we can potentially constrain quasar properties and the environments they reside in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the sizes of quasar proximity zones with synthetic quasar absorption spectra obtained by postprocessing a Cosmic Reionization On Computers (CROC) simulation. CROC simulations have both relatively large box sizes and high spatial resolution, allowing us to resolve Lyman limit systems (LLSs), which are crucial for modeling the quasar absorption spectra. We find that before reionization, most quasar proximity zone sizes grow steadily for ∼10 Myr, while after reionization, they grow rapidly but only for ∼0.1 Myr. We also find a slow growth of Robs with decreasing turn-on redshift. In addition, we find that ∼1%–2% of old quasars (30 Myr old) display extremely small proximity zone sizes (<1 proper Mpc), the vast majority of which are due to the occurrence of a damped Lyα absorber (DLA) or an LLS along the line of sight. These DLAs and LLSs are contaminated with metal, which offers a way to distinguish them from the normal proximity zones of young quasars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several massive (M* > 108M⊙), high-redshift (z = 8–10) galaxies have recently been discovered to contain stars with ages of several hundred million years, pushing the onset of star formation in these galaxies back to z ∼ 15. The very existence of stars formed so early may serve as a test for cosmological models with suppressed small-scale power (and, hence, late formation of cosmic structure). We explore the ages of the oldest stars in numerical simulations from the Cosmic Reionization On Computers project with cold dark matter (CDM) and two warm dark matter (WDM) cosmologies with 3 and 6 keV particles. There are statistically significant differences of ∼5 Myr between average stellar ages of massive galaxies in CDM and 3 keV WDM, while CDM and 6 keV WDM are statistically indistinguishable. Even this 5 Myr difference, however, is much less than current observational uncertainties on the stellar population properties of high-redshift galaxies. The age distributions of all galaxies in all cosmologies fail to produce a substantial Balmer break, although uncertainties in dust attenuation are a potentially significant factor. Finally, we assess the convergence of our simulation predictions and find that the systematic uncertainties on individual galaxy properties are comparable to the differences between cosmologies, suggesting these differences may not be numerically robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fast multipole method (FMM) obeys periodic boundary conditions "natively" if it uses a periodic Green's function for computing the multipole expansion in the interaction zone of each FMM oct-tree node. One can define the "optimal" Green's function for such a method that results in the numerical solution that converges to the equivalent particle-mesh (PM) solution in the limit of sufficiently high order of multipoles. A discrete functional equation for the optimal Green's function can be derived, but is not practically useful as methods for its solution are not known. Instead, this paper presents an approximation for the optimal Green's function that is accurate to better than 10−3 in norm and 10−4 in L2 norm for practically useful multipole counts. Such an approximately optimal Green's function offers a practical way for implementing the FMM with periodic boundary conditions natively, without the need to compute lattice sums or to rely on hybrid FMM-PM approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gas cooling and heating functions play a crucial role in galaxy formation. But, it is computationally expensive to exactly compute these functions in the presence of an incident radiation field. These computations can be greatly sped up by using interpolation tables of pre-computed values, at the expense of making significant and sometimes even unjustified approximations. Here, we explore the capacity of machine learning to approximate cooling and heating functions with a generalized radiation field. Specifically, we use the machine learning algorithm XGBoost to predict cooling and heating functions calculated with the photoionization code cloudy at fixed metallicity, using different combinations of photoionization rates as features. We perform a constrained quadratic fit in metallicity to enable a fair comparison with traditional interpolation methods at arbitrary metallicity. We consider the relative importance of various photoionization rates through both a principal component analysis (PCA) and calculation of SHapley Additive exPlanation (shap) values for our XGBoost models. We use feature importance information to select different subsets of rates to use in model training. Our XGBoost models outperform a traditional interpolation approach at each fixed metallicity, regardless of feature selection. At arbitrary metallicity, we are able to reduce the frequency of the largest cooling and heating function errors compared to an interpolation table. We find that the primary bottleneck to increasing accuracy lies in accurately capturing the metallicity dependence. This study demonstrates the potential of machine learning methods such as XGBoost to capture the non-linear behaviour of cooling and heating functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An optimally efficient explicit numerical scheme for solving fluid dynamics equations, or any other parabolic or hyperbolic system of partial differential equations, should allow local regions to advance in time with their own, locally constrained time steps. However, such a scheme can result in violation of the Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) condition, which is manifestly non-local. Although the violations can be considered to be “weak” in a certain sense and the corresponding numerical solution may be stable, such calculation does not guarantee the correct propagation speed for arbitrary waves . We use an experimental fluid dynamics code that allows cubic “patches” of grid cells to step with independent, locally constrained time steps to demonstrate how the CFL condition can be enforced by imposing a constraint on the time steps of neighboring patches. We perform several numerical tests that illustrate errors introduced in the numerical solutions by weak CFL condition violations and show how strict enforcement of the CFL condition eliminates these errors. In all our tests the strict enforcement of the CFL condition does not impose a significant performance penalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We extend the existing analytical model of reionization by Furlanetto et al. to include the biasing of reionization sources and additional absorption by Lyman limit systems. Both effects enhance the original model in non-trivial ways, but do not change its qualitative features. Our model is, by construction, consistent with the observed evolution of the galaxy luminosity function at z ≲ 8 and with the observed evolution of Lyα forest at z ≲ 6. We find that the same model can match the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe/Planck constraint on the Thompson optical depth and the South Pole Telescope and EDGES constraints on the duration of reionization for values of the relative escape fraction that are consistent with the observational measurements at lower redshifts. However, such a match is only possible if dwarf galaxies contribute substantially to the ionizing photon budget. The latter condition is inconsistent with simulations and observational upper limits on the escape fraction from dwarfs at z ~ 3. Whether such a disagreement is due to the different nature of z > 6 galaxies, the inadequacy of simulations and/or some of the observational constraints, or indicates an additional source of ionizing radiation at z > 8 remains to be seen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-redshift quasars ionize He  ii into He  iii around them, heating the intergalactic medium in the process and creating large regions with elevated temperature. In this work, we demonstrate a method based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) to recover the spatial profile for T 0, the temperature at the mean cosmic density, in quasar proximity zones. We train the neural network with synthetic spectra drawn from a Cosmic Reionization on Computers simulation. We discover that the simple CNN is able to recover the temperature profile with an accuracy of ≈1400 K in an idealized case of negligible observational uncertainties. We test the robustness of the CNN and discover that it is robust against the uncertainties in quasar host halo mass, quasar continuum, and ionizing flux. We also find that the CNN has good generality with regard to the hardness of quasar spectra. This shows that with noiseless spectra, one could use a simple CNN to distinguish gas inside or outside the He  iii region created by the quasar. Because the size of the He  iii region is closely related to the total quasar lifetime, this method has great potential in constraining the quasar lifetime on ∼Myr time-scales. However, noise poses a big problem for accuracy and could downgrade the accuracy to ≈2340 K even for very high signal-to-noise (≳50) spectra. Future studies are needed to reduce the error associated with noise to constrain the lifetimes of reionization epoch quasars with currently available data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Characterizing the conversion factor between CO emission and column density of molecular hydrogen, XCO, is crucial in studying the gaseous content of galaxies, its evolution, and relation to star formation. In most cases the conversion factor is assumed to be close to that of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in the Milky Way, except possibly for mergers and star-bursting galaxies. However, there are physical grounds to expect that it should also depend on the gas metallicity, surface density, and strength of the interstellar radiation field. The XCO factor may also depend on the scale on which CO emission is averaged due to effects of limited resolution. We study the dependence of XCO on gas properties and averaging scale using a model that is based on a combination of results of sub-parsec scale magnetohydrodynamic simulations and on the gas distribution from self-consistent cosmological simulations of galaxy formation. Our model predicts XCO ≈ (2-4) x 1020 K-1 cm-2 km-1 s, consistent with the Galactic value, for interstellar medium conditions typical for the MilkyWay. For such conditions the predicted XCO varies by only a factor of two for gas surface densities in the range ΣH2 ∼ 50-500M⊙ pc-2. However, the model also predicts that more generally on the scale of GMCs, XCO is a strong function of metallicity and depends on the column density and the interstellar UV flux.We show explicitly that neglecting these dependencies in observational estimates can strongly bias the inferred distribution of H2 column densities of molecular clouds to have a narrower and offset range compared to the true distribution. We find that when averaged on ∼kiloparsec scales the X-factor depends only weakly on radiation field and column density, but is still a strong function of metallicity. The predicted metallicity dependence can be approximated as XCO ∝ Z-γ with γ ≈ 0.5-0.8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The close relation of star formation with molecular gas indicated by observations and assumed in recent models implies that the efficiency with which galaxies convert their gas into stars depends on gas metallicity. This is because abundance of molecular hydrogen is sensitive to abundance of dust, which catalyzes formation of H, and helps to shield it from dissociating radiation. In this study, we point out that in the absence of significant] pre-enrichment by Population III stars forming out of zero metallicity gas, such H2-based star formation is expected to leave an imprint in the form of bi-modality in the metallicity distribution among dwarf galaxies and in the metallicity distribution of stars within individual galaxies. The bi-modality arises because when gas metallicity (and dust abundance) is low, formation of molecular gas is inefficient, the gas consumption timescale is long, and star formation and metal enrichment proceed slowly. When metallicity reaches a critical threshold value star formation and enrichment accelerate, which leads to rapid increase in both stellar mass and metallicity of galaxies. We demonstrate this process both using a simple analytical model and full cosmological simulations. In contrast, the observed metallicity distributions of dwarf galaxies or stars within them are not bi-modal. We argue that this discrepancy points to substantial early stochastic pre-enrichment by Population llI stars to levels Z ~ 10-2 Zʘ in dense, star-forming regions of early galaxies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have developed an algorithm, calledvoboz(VOronoi BOund Zones), to find haloes in anN-body dark matter simulation; it has as little dependence on free parameters as we can manage. By using the Voronoi diagram, we achieve non-parametric,‘natural’ measurements of each particle's density and set of neighbours. We then eliminate much of the ambiguity in merging sets of particles together by identifying every possible density peak, and measuring the probability that each does not arise from Poisson noise. The main halo in a cluster tends to have a high probability, while its subhaloes tend to have lower probabilities. The first parameter invobozcontrols the subtlety of particle unbinding, and may be eliminated if one is cavalier with processor time; even if one is not, the results saturate to the parameter-free answer when the parameter is sufficiently small. The only parameter that remains, an outer density cut-off, does not influence whether or not haloes are identified, nor does it have any effect on subhaloes; it only affects the masses returned for supercluster haloes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the morphology of the secondary cosmic microwave background anisotropies. Galaxies; Intergalactic medium; Cosmology; Structure of the universe.

We investigate possible systematic errors in the recent measurement of the matter power spectrum from the Lyman-alpha forest by Croft et al. We find that for a large set of prior cosmological models the Croft et al. result holds quite well, with systematic errors being comparable with random ones, when a dependence of the recovered-matter power spectrum on the cosmological parameters at z∼3 is taken into account. We find that peculiar velocities cause the flux power spectrum to be smoothed over about 100–300 km s[sup -1] , depending on scale. Consequently, the recovered-matter power spectrum is a smoothed version of the underlying true power spectrum. Uncertainties in the recovered power spectrum are thus correlated over about 100–300 km s[sup -1] . As a side effect, we find that residual fluctuations in the ionizing background, while having almost no effect on the recovered-matter power spectrum, significantly bias estimates of the baryon density from the Lyman-alpha forest data. We therefore conclude that the Croft et al. result provides a powerful new constraint on cosmological parameters and models of structure formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooling and heating functions describe how radiative processes impact the thermal state of a gas as a function of its temperature and other physical properties. In a most general case the functions depend on the detailed distributions of ionic species and on the radiation spectrum. Hence, these functions may vary on a very wide range of spatial and temporal scales. In this paper, we explore cooling and heating functions between 5 ≤ z ≤ 10 in simulated galaxies from the Cosmic Reionization On Computers project. We compare three functions: (1) the actual cooling and heating rates of hydrodynamic cells as a function of cell temperature, (2) the median cooling and heating functions computed using median interstellar medium (ISM) properties (median ISM), and (3) the median of the cooling and heating functions of all gas cells (instantaneous). We find that the median ISM and instantaneous approaches to finding a median cooling and heating function give identical results within the spread due to cell-to-cell variation. However, the actual cooling (heating) rates experienced by the gas at different temperatures in the simulations do not correspond to either summarized cooling (heating) functions. In other words, the thermodynamics of the gas in the simulations cannot be described by a single set of a cooling plus a heating function with a spatially constant radiation field that could be computed with common tools, such as CLOUDY. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a suite of hydrodynamics simulations of the interstellar medium (ISM) within a galactic disk, which includes radiative transfer, a nonequilibrium model of molecular hydrogen, and a realistic model for star formation and feedback, to study the structure of the ISM and H2 abundance as a function of local ISM properties. We show that the star formation rate and structure of the ISM are sensitive to the metallicity of the gas with a progressively smoother density distribution with decreasing metallicity. In addition to the well-known trend of the H I– H 2 transition shifting to higher densities with decreasing metallicity, the maximum achieved molecular fraction in the ISM drops drastically at Z ≲ 0.2 Z ⊙ as the formation time of H2 becomes much longer than a typical lifetime of dense regions of the ISM. We present accurate fitting formulae for both volumetric and projected f H 2 measured on different scales as a function of gas metallicity, UV radiation field, and gas density. We show that when the formulae are applied to the patches in the simulated galaxy, the overall molecular gas mass is reproduced to better than a factor of ≲1.5 across the entire range of metallicities and scales. We also show that the presented fit is considerably more accurate than any of the previous f H 2 models and fitting formulae in the low-metallicity regime. The fit can thus be used for modeling molecular gas in low-resolution simulations and semi-analytic models of galaxy formation in the dwarf and high-redshift regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial decorrelation of dense molecular gas and young stars observed on ≲1 kpc scales in nearby galaxies indicates rapid dispersal of star-forming regions by stellar feedback. We explore the sensitivity of this decorrelation to different processes controlling the structure of the interstellar medium, the abundance of molecular gas, star formation, and feedback in a suite of simulations of an isolated dwarf galaxy with structural properties similar to NGC 300 that self-consistently model radiative transfer and molecular chemistry. Our fiducial simulation reproduces the magnitude of decorrelation and its scale dependence measured in NGC 300, and we show that this agreement is due to different aspects of feedback, including H2 dissociation, gas heating by the locally variable UV field, early mechanical feedback, and supernovae. In particular, early radiative and mechanical feedback affects the correlation on ≲100 pc scales, while supernovae play a significant role on ≳ 100 pc scales. The correlation is also sensitive to the choice of the local star formation efficiency per free fall time, ϵff, which provides a strong observational constraint on ϵff when the global star formation rate is independent of its value. Finally, we explicitly show that the degree of correlation between the peaks of molecular gas and star formation density is directly related to the distribution of the lifetimes of star-forming regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the evolution of the phase diagram of the low-density intergalactic medium during the Epoch of Reionization in simulation boxes with varying reionization histories from the Cosmic Reionization on Computers project. The probability density function (PDF) of gas temperature at fixed density exhibits two clear modes: a warm and a cold temperature mode, corresponding to the gas inside and outside of ionized bubbles. We find that the transition between the two modes is 'universal' in the sense that its timing is accurately parametrized by the value of the volume-weighted neutral fraction for any reionization history. This 'universality' is more complex than just a reflection of the fact that ionized gas is warm and neutral gas is cold: it holds for the transition at a fixed value of gas density, and gas at different densities transitions from the cold to the warm mode at different values of the neutral fraction, reflecting a non-trivial relationship between the ionization history and the evolving gas density PDF. Furthermore, the 'emergence' of the tight temperature–density relation in the warm mode is also approximately 'universally' controlled by the volume-weighted neutral fraction for any reionization history. In particular, the 'emergence' of the temperature–density relation (as quantified by the rapid decrease in its width) occurs when the neutral fraction is 10−4 ≲ X H  i ≲ 10−3 for any reionization history. Our results indicate that the neutral fraction is a primary quantity controlling the various properties of the temperature–density relation, regardless of reionization history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the connection between the stellar component of galaxies and their host halos during the epoch of reionization (5 ≤ z ≤ 10) using the CROC (Cosmic Reionization on Computers) simulations. We compare simulated galaxies with observations and find that CROC underpredicts the abundance of luminous galaxies when compared to observed UV luminosity functions, and analogously the most massive galaxies when compared to observed stellar mass functions. We can trace the deficit of star formation to high redshifts, where the slope of the star formation rate to stellar mass relation is consistent with observations, but the normalization is systematically low. This results in a star formation rate density and stellar mass density that are systematically offset from observations. However, the less luminous or lower stellar mass objects have luminosities and stellar masses that agree fairly well with observational data. We explore the stellar-to-halo mass ratio (SHMR), a key quantity that is difficult to measure at high redshifts and that models do not consistently predict. In CROC, the SHMR decreases with redshift, a trend opposite to some abundance-matching studies. These discrepancies uncover where future effort should be focused in order to improve the fidelity of modeling cosmic reionization. We also compare the CROC galaxy bias with observational measurements using Lyman-break galaxy samples, finding reasonable consistency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several facts about the history of Andromeda galaxy. The author notes that it is a sister and a neighbor galaxy of the Milky Way and they both coexist in an otherwise rather undistinguished corner of the cosmos. He asserts that they comprised with about 100 billion stars each and surrounded by around 50 satellite galaxies that range from small to truly tiny. He states that they are far enough apart that their gravitational forces do not disturb each other. He adds that Andromeda's massive gravity caused tides in Triangulum so enormous that millions of stars were hurled beyond Triangulum's edge.

This article presents information regarding the evolution of universe. Since the first analogue simulation by Erik Holmberg, who used the inverse-square law of light to mimic gravity, numerical cosmology has made remarkable progress, abstract particles and digital supercomputers have now replaced light bulbs and photometers as tools for measuring gravitational forces. An alternative approach to this kind of semi-analytical modelling is to use a hydrodynamic simulation code, which follows the complex swirl of cosmic gas from the largest scales down to the tiny and ultra-dense molecular clouds where stars are born.

The effect of line overlap in the Lyman and Werner bands, often ignored in galactic studies of the atomic-to-molecular transition, greatly enhances molecular hydrogen self-shielding in low metallicity environments and dominates over dust shielding for metallicities below about 10% solar. We implement that effect in cosmological hydrodynamics simulations with an empirical model, calibrated against the observational data, and provide fitting formulae for the molecular hydrogen fraction as a function of gas density on various spatial scales and in environments with varied dust abundance and interstellar radiation field. We find that line overlap, while important for detailed radiative transfer in the Lyman and Werner bands, has only a minor effect on star formation on galactic scales, which, to a much larger degree, is regulated by stellar feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cosmic Reionization On Computers is a long-term program of numerical simulations of cosmic reionization. Its goal is to model fully self-consistently (albeit not necessarily from the first principles) all relevant physics, from radiative transfer to gas dynamics and star formation, in simulation volumes of up to 100 comoving Mpc, and with spatial resolution approaching 100 pc in physical units. In this method paper, we describe our numerical method, the design of simulations, and the calibration of numerical parameters. Using several sets (ensembles) of simulations in 20 h–1 Mpc and 40 h–1 Mpc boxes with spatial resolution reaching 125 pc at z = 6, we are able to match the observed galaxy UV luminosity functions at all redshifts between 6 and 10, as well as obtain reasonable agreement with the observational measurements of the Gunn-Peterson optical depth at z < 6. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare the results from several sets of cosmological simulations of cosmic reionization, produced under the Cosmic Reionization On Computers project, with existing observational data on the high-redshift Lyα forest and the abundance of Lyα emitters. We find good consistency with the observational measurements and previous simulation work. By virtue of having several independent realizations for each set of numerical parameters, we are able to explore the effect of cosmic variance on observable quantities. One unexpected conclusion we are forced into is that cosmic variance is unusually large at z > 6, with both our simulations and, most likely, observational measurements still not fully converged for even such basic quantities as the average Gunn-Peterson optical depth or the volume-weighted neutral fraction. We also find that reionization has little effect on the early galaxies or on global cosmic star formation history, because galaxies whose gas content is affected by photoionization contain no molecular (i.e., star-forming) gas in the first place. In particular, measurements of the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function by the James Webb Space Telescope are unlikely to provide a useful constraint on reionization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss the role of recombinations in the intergalactic medium, and the related concept of the clumping factor, during cosmic reionization. The clumping factor is, in general, a local quantity that depends on both the local overdensity and the scale below which the baryon density field can be assumed smooth. That scale, called the filtering scale, depends on over-density and local thermal history. We present a method for building a self-consistent analytical model of inhomogeneous reionization, assuming the linear growth rate of the density fluctuation, which simultaneously accounts for these effects. We show that taking into account the local clumping factor introduces significant corrections to the total recombination rate, compared to the model with a globally uniform clumping factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the high column density regime of the H I column density distribution function and argue that there are two distinct features: a turnover at NH I ≈ 1021 cm–2, which is present at both z = 0 and z ≈ 3, and a lack of systems above NH I ≈ 1022 cm–2 at z = 0. Using observations of the column density distribution, we argue that the H I-H2 transition does not cause the turnover at NH I ≈ 1021 cm–2 but can plausibly explain the turnover at NH I ≳ 1022 cm–2. We compute the H I column density distribution of individual galaxies in the THINGS sample and show that the turnover column density depends only weakly on metallicity. Furthermore, we show that the column density distribution of galaxies, corrected for inclination, is insensitive to the resolution of the H I map or to averaging in radial shells. Our results indicate that the similarity of H I column density distributions at z = 3 and 0 is due to the similarity of the maximum H I surface densities of high-z and low-z disks, set presumably by universal processes that shape properties of the gaseous disks of galaxies. Using fully cosmological simulations, we explore other candidate physical mechanisms that could produce a turnover in the column density distribution. We show that while turbulence within giant molecular clouds cannot affect the damped Lyα column density distribution, stellar feedback can affect it significantly if the feedback is sufficiently effective in removing gas from the central 2-3 kpc of high-redshift galaxies. Finally, we argue that it is meaningful to compare column densities averaged over ∼ kpc scales with those estimated from quasar spectra that probe sub-pc scales due to the steep power spectrum of H I column density fluctuations observed in nearby galaxies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is ample observational evidence that the star formation rate (SFR) surface density, ΣSFR, is closely correlated with the surface density of molecular hydrogen, . This empirical relation holds both for galaxy-wide averages and for individual ≳kpc sized patches of the interstellar medium, but appears to degrade substantially at a sub-kpc scale. Identifying the physical mechanisms that determine the scale-dependent properties of the observed relation remains a challenge from a theoretical perspective. To address this question, we analyze the slope and scatter of the relation using a set of cosmological, galaxy formation simulations with a peak resolution of ∼100 pc. These simulations include a chemical network for molecular hydrogen, a model for the CO emission, and a simple, stochastic prescription for star formation that operates on ∼100 pc scales. Specifically, star formation is modeled as a Poisson process in which the average SFR is directly proportional to the present mass of H2. The predictions of our numerical model are in good agreement with the observed Kennicutt-Schmidt and relations. We show that observations based on CO emission are ill suited to reliably measure the slope of the latter relation at low (≲ 20 M☼ pc–2) H2 surface densities on sub-kpc scales. Our models also predict that the inferred relation steepens at high H2 surface densities as a result of the surface density dependence of the CO/H2 conversion factor. Finally, we show that on sub-kpc scales most of the scatter of the relation is a consequence of discreteness effects of the star formation process. In contrast, variations of the CO/H2 conversion factor are responsible for most of the scatter measured on super-kpc scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The baryonic Tully-Fisher relation is an important observational constraint on cosmological and galactic models. However, it is critical to keep in mind that in observations only stars and molecular and atomic gas are counted, while the contribution of the ionized gas is almost universally missed. The ionized gas is, however, expected to be present in the gaseous disks of dwarf galaxies simply because they are exposed to the cosmic ionizing background and to the stellar radiation that manages to escape from the central regions of the galactic disks into their outer layers. Such an expectation is, indeed, born out both by cosmological numerical simulations and by simple analytical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the transition from primordial Population III (Pop III) star formation to normal Pop II star formation in the first galaxies using new cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. We find that while the first stars seed their host galaxies with metals, they cannot sustain significant outflows to enrich the intergalactic medium, even assuming a top-heavy initial mass function. This means that Pop III star formation could potentially continue until z ≈ 6 in different unenriched regions of the universe, before being ultimately shut off by cosmic reionization. Within an individual galaxy, the metal production and stellar feedback from Pop II stars overtake Pop III stars in 20-200 Myr, depending on galaxy mass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We revisit the formation and evolution of the first galaxies using new hydrodynamic cosmological simulations with the adaptive refinement tree code. Our simulations feature a recently developed model for H2 formation and dissociation, and a star formation recipe that is based on molecular rather than atomic gas. Here, we develop and implement a recipe for the formation of metal-free Population III (Pop III) stars in galaxy-scale simulations that resolve primordial clouds with sufficiently high density. We base our recipe on the results of prior zoom-in simulations that resolved the protostellar collapse in pre-galactic objects. We find the epoch during which Pop III stars dominated the energy and metal budget of the first galaxies to be short-lived. Galaxies that host Pop III stars do not retain dynamical signatures of their thermal and radiative feedback for more than 108 years after the lives of the stars end in pair-instability supernovae, even when we consider the maximum reasonable efficiency of the feedback. Though metals ejected by the supernovae can travel well beyond the virial radius of the host galaxy, they typically begin to fall back quickly, and do not enrich a large fraction of the intergalactic medium. Galaxies with a total mass in excess of 3 × 106 M⊙ re-accrete most of their baryons and transition to metal-enriched Pop II star formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies showed that an estimate of the likelihood distribution of the Milky Way (MW) halo mass can be derived using the properties of the satellites similar to the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC). However, it would be straightforward to interpret such an estimate only if the properties of the Magellanic Clouds (MCs) are fairly typical and are not biased by the environment. In this study, we explore whether the environment of the MW affects the properties of the SMC and LMC such as their velocities. To test for the effect of the environment, we compare velocity distributions for MC-sized subhalos around MW hosts in a sample selected simply by mass and in the second sample of such halos selected with additional restrictions on the distance to the nearest cluster and the local galaxy density, designed to mimic the environment of the Local Group (LG). We find that satellites in halos in the LG-like environments do have somewhat larger velocities, as compared to the halos of similar mass in the sample without environmental constraints. For example, the fraction of subhalos matching the velocity of the LMC is 23% ± 2% larger in the LG-like environments. We derive the host halo likelihood distribution for the samples in the LG-like environment and in the control sample and find that the environment does not significantly affect the derived likelihood. We use the updated properties of the SMC and LMC to derive the constraint on the MW halo mass of log (M200/M⊙) = 12.06-0.19+0.31 (90% confidence interval). We also explore the incidence of close pairs with relative velocities and separations similar to those of the LMC and SMC and find that such pairs are quite rare among ΛCDM halos. Only 2% of halos in the MW mass range have a relatively close pair (Δr < 40 kpc and Δs < 160 km s-1) of subhalos with circular velocities vcirc > 50 km s-1. Pairs with masses and separations similar to those of the LMC and SMC (ΔrMC = 23.4 ± 10 kpc and ΔsMC = 128 ± 32 km s-1) are found only in one out of ≈30,000 MW-sized halos. Interestingly, the halo mass likelihood distribution for host halos constrained to have MC-like close pairs of subhalos is quite different from the global likelihood from which the MWhalo mass constraint discussed above was derived. Taking into account the close separation of the MCs in the Busha et al. method results in the shift of the MW halo mass estimate to smaller masses, with the peak shifting approximately by a factor of two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been recently shown that the relative velocity between the dark matter and the baryons (vbc) at the time of recombination can affect the structure formation in the early universe. We statistically quantify this effect using large cosmological simulations. We use three different high-resolution sets of simulations (with separate transfer functions for baryons and dark matter) that vary in box size, particle number, and the value of the relative velocity between dark matter and baryons. We show that the total number density of halos is suppressed by ~20% at z = 25 for vbc = 1σvbc, where σvbc is the variance of the relative velocity, while for vbc = 3.4σvbc the relative suppression at the same redshift reaches 50%, remaining at or above the 30% level all the way to z = 11. We also find a high abundance of "empty halos," i.e., halos that have gas fraction below half of the cosmic mean baryonic fraction ...b. Specifically, we find that for vbc = 1σvbc all halos below 105 M⊙ are empty at z ≥ 19. The high abundance of empty halos results in significant delay in the formation of gas-rich minihalos and the first galaxies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eulerian hydrodynamical simulations are a powerful and popular tool for modelling fluids in astrophysical systems. In this work, we critically examine recent claims that these methods violate Galilean invariance of the Euler equations. We demonstrate that Eulerian hydrodynamics methods do converge to a Galilean-invariant solution, provided a well-defined convergent solution exists. Specifically, we show that numerical diffusion, resulting from diffusion-like terms in the discretized hydrodynamical equations solved by Eulerian methods, accounts for the effects previously identified as evidence for the Galilean non-invariance of these methods. These velocity-dependent diffusive terms lead to different results for different bulk velocities when the spatial resolution of the simulation is kept fixed, but their effect becomes negligible as the resolution of the simulation is increased to obtain a converged solution. In particular, we find that Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities develop properly in realistic Eulerian calculations regardless of the bulk velocity provided the problem is simulated with sufficient resolution (a factor of 2–4 increase compared to the case without bulk flows for realistic velocities). Our results reiterate that high-resolution Eulerian methods can perform well and obtain a convergent solution, even in the presence of highly supersonic bulk flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a high-resolution cosmological simulation of reionization, we have examined the differing structures formed by gas and dark matter at a redshift of 5.1. Baryon-rich regions form a small number of filaments, which connect the largest galaxies in the simulation. More detailed examination of the 10 largest galaxies reveals long, slender gaseous filaments about five proper kpc in width radiating from the galaxy centers. Extending out from each filament are a few smooth, thin, nearly planar gaseous sheets. By contrast, the dark matter concentrates into quasi-spherical bodies. The results have implications for our understanding of structure formation in the early Universe and of the Lyman α forest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new, galaxy halo model of large-scale structure, in which the galaxies entering a given sample are the fundamental objects. Haloes attach to galaxies, in contrast to the standard halo model, in which galaxies attach to haloes. The galaxy halo model pertains mainly to the relationships between the power spectra of galaxies and mass, and their cross-power spectrum. With surprisingly little input, an intuition-aiding approximation to the galaxy–matter cross-correlation coefficient emerges in terms of the halo mass dispersion. This approximation seems valid to mildly non-linear scales , allowing the measurement of the bias and the matter power spectrum from measurements of the galaxy and galaxy–matter power spectra (or correlation functions). This is especially relevant given the recent advances in precision in measurements of the galaxy–matter correlation function from weak gravitational lensing. The galaxy halo model also addresses the issue of interpreting the galaxy–matter correlation function as an average halo density profile, and provides a simple description of galaxy bias as a function of scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use numerical simulations of a cosmological volume to study the X-ray ionization and heating of the intergalactic medium (IGM) by an early population of accreting black holes (BHs). By considering theoretical limits on the accretion rate and observational constraints from the X-ray background and faint X-ray source counts, we find that the maximum value of the optical depth to Thompson scattering which can be produced using these models is, in agreement with previous semi-analytic results. The redshifted soft X-ray background produced by these early sources is important in producing a fully ionized atomic hydrogen in the low-density intergalactic medium before stellar reionization at redshift. As a result, stellar re-ionization is characterized by an almost instantaneous‘overlap phase’ of H iiregions. The background also produces a second He iire-ionization at about redshift 3 and maintains the temperature of the IGM at about 10 000 K even at low redshifts.If the spectral energy distribution of these sources has a non-negligible high-energy power-law component, the luminosity in the soft X-ray band of the‘typical’ galaxies hosting intermediate-mass accreting BHs is maximum atz∼ 15 and is about one or two orders of magnitude below the sensitivity limit of theChandraDeep Field. We find that about a thousand of these sources may be present per square arcmin of the sky, producing potentially detectable fluctuations. We also estimate that a few rare objects, not present in our small simulated volume, could be luminous enough to be visible in theChandraDeep Field. TheXEUSandConstellation-Xsatellites will be able to detect more of these sources that, if radio loud, could be used to study the 21-cm forest in absorption.A signature of an early X-ray pre-ionization is the production of secondary cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies on small angular scales (<1 arcmin). We find that in these models the power spectrum of temperature fluctuations increases with decreasing angular scale (at∼1-arcsec scales), while for stellar re-ionization scenarios the power decreases on smaller scales. We also show that the redshifted 21-cm radiation from neutral hydrogen can be marginally detected in emission at redshifts. At a redshift of aboutz∼ 30 a stronger and narrower (in redshift space) signal in absorption against the CMB, that is peculiar to these models, could be detectable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By comparing the Point Source Catalogue Redshift (PSC z) galaxy power spectrum with the results of nested pure dark matter N-body simulations, we try to understand how infrared-selected galaxies populate dark matter haloes, paying special attention to the method of halo identification in the simulations. We thus test the hypothesis that baryonic physics negligibly affects the distribution of galaxies down to the smallest scales yet observed. We are successful in reproducing the PSC z power spectrum on scales , near our resolution limit, by imposing a central density cut-off on simulated haloes, which gives a rough minimum mass and circular velocity of haloes in which PSC z galaxies formed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systematic uncertainties that have been subdominant in past large-scale structure (LSS) surveys are likely to exceed statistical uncertainties of current and future LSS data sets, potentially limiting the extraction of cosmological information. Here we present a general framework (Principal Component Analysis - PCA - marginalization) to consistently incorporate systematic effects into a likelihood analysis. This technique naturally accounts for degeneracies between nuisance parameters and can substantially reduce the dimension of the parameter space that needs to be sampled. As a practical application, we apply PCA marginalization to account for baryonic physics as an uncertainty in cosmic shear tomography. Specifically, we use COSMOLIKE to run simulated likelihood analyses on three independent sets of numerical simulations, each covering a wide range of baryonic scenarios differing in cooling, star formation, and feedback mechanisms. We simulate a Stage III (Dark Energy Survey) and Stage IV (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope/Euclid) survey and find a substantial bias in cosmological constraints if baryonic physics is not accounted for. We then show that PCA marginalization (employing at most three to four nuisance parameters) removes this bias. Our study demonstrates that it is possible to obtain robust, precise constraints on the dark energy equation of state even in the presence of large levels of systematic uncertainty in astrophysical processes. We conclude that the PCA marginalization technique is a powerful, general tool for addressing many of the challenges facing the precision cosmology programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use recent proper motion measurements of the tangential velocity of M31, along with its radial velocity and distance, to derive the likelihood of the sum of halo masses of the Milky Way and M31. This is done using a sample of halo pairs in the Bolshoi cosmological simulation of ΛCDM cosmology selected to match the properties and the environment of the Local Group. The resulting likelihood gives an estimate of the sum of the masses of MMW, 200c + MM31, 200c = (90% confidence interval). This estimate is consistent with individual mass estimates for the Milky Way and M31 and is consistent, albeit somewhat on the low side, with the mass estimated using the timing argument. We show that although the timing argument is unbiased on average for all pairs, for pairs constrained to have radial and tangential velocities similar to that of the Local Group the argument overestimates the sum of masses by a factor of 1.6. Using similar technique, we estimate the total dark matter mass enclosed within 1 Mpc from the Local Group barycenter to be (90% confidence interval). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular hydrogen (H2) is the primary component of the reservoirs of cold, dense gas that fuel star formation in our Galaxy. While the H2 abundance is ultimately regulated by physical processes operating on small scales in the interstellar medium (ISM), observations have revealed a tight correlation between the ratio of molecular to atomic hydrogen in nearby spiral galaxies and the pressure in the mid-plane of their disks. This empirical relation has been used to predict H2 abundances in galaxies with potentially very different ISM conditions, such as metal-deficient galaxies at high redshifts. Here, we test the validity of this approach by studying the dependence of the pressure-H2 relation on environmental parameters of the ISM. To this end, we follow the formation and destruction of H2 explicitly in a suite of hydrodynamical simulations of galaxies with different ISM parameters. We find that a pressure-H2 relation arises naturally in our simulations for a variety of dust-to-gas ratios or strengths of the interstellar radiation field in the ISM. Fixing the dust-to-gas ratio and the UV radiation field to values measured in the solar neighborhood results in fair agreement with the relation observed in nearby galaxies with roughly solar metallicity. However, the parameters (slope and normalization) of the pressure-H2 relation vary in a systematical way with ISM properties. A particularly strong trend is the decrease of the normalization of the relation with a lowering of the dust-to-gas ratio of the ISM. We show how this trend and other properties of the pressure-H2 relation arise from the atomic-to-molecular phase transition in the ISM caused by a combination of H2 formation, destruction, and shielding mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the momentum and energy budget of stellar feedback during different stages of stellar evolution, and study its impact on the interstellar medium (ISM) using simulations of local star-forming regions and galactic disks at the resolution affordable in modern cosmological zoom-in simulations. In particular, we present a novel subgrid model for the momentum injection due to radiation pressure and stellar winds from massive stars during early, pre-supernova (pre-SN) evolutionary stages of young star clusters. Early injection of momentum acts to clear out dense gas in star-forming regions, hence limiting star formation. The reduced gas density mitigates radiative losses of thermal feedback energy from subsequent SN explosions. The detailed impact of stellar feedback depends sensitively on the implementation and choice of parameters. Somewhat encouragingly, we find that implementations in which feedback is efficient lead to approximate self-regulation of the global star formation efficiency. We compare simulation results using our feedback implementation to other phenomenological feedback methods, where thermal feedback energy is allowed to dissipate over timescales longer than the formal gas cooling time.We find that simulations with maximal momentum injection suppress star formation to a similar degree as is found in simulations adopting adiabatic thermal feedback. However, different feedback schemes are found to produce significant differences in the density and thermodynamic structure of the ISM, and are hence expected to have a qualitatively different impact on galaxy evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the detailed structure of galaxies at redshifts z ⩾ 2 using cosmological simulations with improved modeling of the interstellar medium and star formation. The simulations follow the formation and dissociation of molecular hydrogen and include star formation only in cold molecular gas. The molecular gas is more concentrated toward the center of galaxies than the atomic gas, and as a consequence, the resulting stellar distribution is very compact. For halos with total mass above 1011M☼, the median half-mass radius of the stellar disks is 0.8 kpc at z ≈ 3. The vertical structure of the molecular disk is much thinner than that of the atomic neutral gas. Relative to the non-radiative run, the inner regions of the dark matter halo change shape from prolate to mildly oblate and align with the stellar disk. However, we do not find evidence for a significant fast-rotating “dark disk” of dark matter around the stellar disk. The outer halo regions retain the orientation acquired during accretion and mergers and are significantly misaligned with the inner regions. The radial profile of the dark matter halo contracts in response to baryon dissipation, establishing an approximately isothermal profile throughout most of the halo. This effect can be accurately described by a modified model of halo contraction. The angular momentum of a fixed amount of inner dark matter is approximately conserved over time, while in the dissipationless case most of it is transferred outward during mergers. The conservation of the dark matter angular momentum provides supporting evidence for the validity of the halo contraction model in a hierarchical galaxy formation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of radiation hydrodynamical methods that are able to follow gas dynamics and radiative transfer (RT) self-consistently is key to the solution of many problems in numerical astrophysics. Such fluid flows are highly complex, rarely allowing even for approximate analytical solutions against which numerical codes can be tested. An alternative validation procedure is to compare different methods against each other on common problems, in order to assess the robustness of the results and establish a range of validity for the methods. Previously, we presented such a comparison for a set of pure RT tests (i.e. for fixed, non-evolving density fields). This is the second paper of the Cosmological Radiative Transfer Comparison Project, in which we compare nine independent RT codes directly coupled to gas dynamics on three relatively simple astrophysical hydrodynamics problems: (i) the expansion of an H ii region in a uniform medium, (ii) an ionization front in a density profile with a flat core and (iii) the photoevaporation of a uniform dense clump. Results show a broad agreement between the different methods and no big failures, indicating that the participating codes have reached a certain level of maturity and reliability. However, many details still do differ, and virtually every code has showed some shortcomings and has disagreed, in one respect or another, with the majority of the results. This underscores the fact that no method is universal and all require careful testing of the particular features which are most relevant to the specific problem at hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radiative transfer (RT) simulations are now at the forefront of numerical astrophysics. They are becoming crucial for an increasing number of astrophysical and cosmological problems; at the same time their computational cost has come within reach of currently available computational power. Further progress is retarded by the considerable number of different algorithms (including various flavours of ray tracing and moment schemes) developed, which makes the selection of the most suitable technique for a given problem a non-trivial task. Assessing the validity ranges, accuracy and performances of these schemes is the main aim of this paper, for which we have compared 11 independent RT codes on five test problems: (0) basic physics; (1) isothermal H ii region expansion; (2) H ii region expansion with evolving temperature; (3) I-front trapping and shadowing by a dense clump and (4) multiple sources in a cosmological density field. The outputs of these tests have been compared and differences analysed. The agreement between the various codes is satisfactory although not perfect. The main source of discrepancy appears to reside in the multifrequency treatment approach, resulting in different thicknesses of the ionized-neutral transition regions and the temperature structure. The present results and tests represent the most complete benchmark available for the development of new codes and improvement of existing ones. To further this aim all test inputs and outputs are made publicly available in digital form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]