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The spatial structure of a host population has a profound effect on the dynamics of infectious diseases. The basic reproduction number, a central quantity in the study of epidemic dynamics, is affected by host clustering as well as host density. Several authors have developed methods to quantify the basic reproduction number in a spatially structured host population. The methods used and the expressions derived are however difficult to apply to real life spatial host structures. In this paper we introduce an explicit expression for the basic reproduction number using the O‐ring statistic, developed in spatial statistics, that quantifies the host density as a function of the distance from a randomly selected host individual. The O‐ring statistic is frequently used in the study of the ecology of spatially structured plant populations, being a convenient summary of the properties of a landscape by way of a single function. The connection we develop between spatial statistics and epidemic dynamics can be used to study the effect of host spatial pattern on the basic reproduction number of infectious diseases. As well as showing how explicit expressions for the basic reproduction number can be derived for landscapes with standard structures, our expression for the basic reproduction number is tested against a simulation model. The model structure in our simulation is motivated by the spread of a plant disease epidemic, although it is applicable more broadly. The agreement between our analytic expression for the basic reproduction number and the corresponding numeric quantity extracted from simulations is close to perfect across a wide range of landscape structures and model parameterisations, and including cases in which more than one species of host is at risk of infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Galaxies that are several virial radii beyond groups/clusters show preferentially quiescent star formation rates (SFR). Using a galaxy group/cluster catalogue from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, together with a cosmologicalN-body simulation, we examine the origin of this environmental quenching beyond the virial radius. Accounting for the clustering of groups/clusters, we show that central galaxies show enhanced SFR quenching out to 2.5 virial radii beyond groups/clusters, and we demonstrate that this extended environmental enhancement can be explained simply by 'ejected' satellite galaxies that orbit beyond their host halo's virial radius. We show that ejected satellites typically orbit for several Gyr beyond the virial radius before falling back in, and thus they compose up to 40 per cent of all central galaxies near groups/clusters. We show that a model in which ejected satellites experience the same SFR quenching as satellites within a host halo can explain essentially all environmental dependence of galaxy quenching. Furthermore, ejected satellites (continue to) lose significant halo mass, an effect that is potentially observable via gravitational lensing. The SFRs/colours and stellar-to-halo masses of ejected satellites highlight the importance of environmental history and present challenges to models of galaxy occupation that ignore such history. © 2014 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Satellite galaxies in groups and clusters aremore likely to have low star formation rates (SFRs) and lie on the 'red sequence' than central ('field') galaxies. Using galaxy group/cluster catalogues from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7, together with a high-resolution, cosmological N-body simulation to track satellite orbits, we examine the star formation histories and quenching time-scales of satellites of Mstar > 5 × 109 M⊙ at z ≈ 0. We first explore satellite infall histories: group preprocessing and ejected orbits are critical aspects of satellite evolution, and properly accounting for these, satellite infall typically occurred at z ~ 0.5, or ~5 Gyr ago. To obtain accurate initial conditions for the SFRs of satellites at their time of first infall, we construct an empirical parametrization for the evolution of central galaxy SFRs and quiescent fractions.With this, we constrain the importance and efficiency of satellite quenching as a function of satellite and host halo mass, finding that satellite quenching is the dominant process for building up all quiescent galaxies at Mstar < 1010M⊙. We then constrain satellite star formation histories, finding a 'delayed-then-rapid' quenching scenario: satellite SFRs evolve unaffected for 2-4 Gyr after infall, after which star formation quenches rapidly, with an e-folding time of

We report on the small-scale (0.5 < r < 40 h-1 Mpc) clustering of 78 895 massive (M 1011.3M) galaxies at 0.2 < z< 0.4 from the first two years of data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), to be released as part of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 9 (DR9). We describe the sample selection, basic properties of the galaxies and caveats for working with the data. We calculate the real- and redshift-space twopoint correlation functions of these galaxies, fit these measurements using halo occupation distribution (HOD) modelling within dark matter cosmological simulations, and estimate the errors using mock catalogues. These galaxies lie in massive haloes, with a mean halo mass of 5.2 1013 h-1M, a large-scale bias of ~2.0 and a satellite fraction of 12 ± 2 per cent. Thus, these galaxies occupy haloes with average masses in between those of the higher redshift BOSS CMASS sample and the original SDSS I/II luminous red galaxy sample © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society © doi:10.1093/mnras/sts314.

Different theoretical methodologies lead to order-of-magnitude variations in predicted galaxy-galaxy merger rates. We examine how this arises and quantify the dominant uncertainties. Modeling of dark matter and galaxy inspiral/merger times contribute factor of ∼2 uncertainties. Different estimates of the halo-halo merger rate, the subhalo "destruction" rate, and the halo merger rate with some dynamical friction time delay for galaxy-galaxy mergers, agree to within this factor of ∼2, provided proper care is taken to define mergers consistently. There are some caveats: if halo/subhalo masses are not appropriately defined the major-merger rate can be dramatically suppressed, and in models with "orphan" galaxies and under-resolved subhalos the merger timescale can be severely overestimated. The dominant differences in galaxy-galaxy merger rates between models owe to the treatment of the baryonic physics. Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations without strong feedback and some older semianalytic models (SAMs), with known discrepancies in mass functions, can be biased by large factors (∼5) in predicted merger rates. However, provided that models yield a reasonable match to the total galaxy mass function, the differences in properties of central galaxies are sufficiently small to alone contribute small (factor of ∼1.5) additional systematics to merger rate predictions. But variations in the baryonic physics of satellite galaxies in models can also have a dramatic effect on merger rates. The well-known problem of satellite "over-quenching" in most current SAMs-whereby SAM satellite populations are too efficiently stripped of their gas-could lead to order-of-magnitude under-estimates of merger rates for low-mass, gas-rich galaxies. Models in which the masses of satellites are fixed by observations (or SAMs adjusted to resolve this "over-quenching") tend to predict higher merger rates, but with factor of ∼2 uncertainties stemming from the uncertainty in those observations. The choice of mass used to define "major" and "minor" mergers also matters: stellar-stellar major mergers can be more or less abundant than halo-halo major mergers by an order of magnitude. At low masses, most true major mergers (mass ratio defined in terms of their baryonic or dynamical mass) will appear to be minor mergers in their stellar mass ratio-observations and models using just stellar criteria could underestimate major-merger rates by factors of ∼3-5. We discuss the uncertainties in relating any merger rate to spheroid formation (in observations or theory): in order to achieve better than factor of ∼3 accuracy, it is necessary to account for the distribution of merger orbital parameters, gas fractions, and the full efficiency of merger-induced effects as a function of mass ratio. © 2010. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

We analyse the internal structure and dynamics of cosmic-web filaments connecting massive high- z haloes. Our analysis is based on a high-resolution arepo cosmological simulation zooming-in on three Mpc-scale filaments feeding three massive haloes of |$\sim 10^{12}\, \text{M}_\odot$| at z ∼ 4, embedded in a large-scale sheet. Each filament is surrounded by a cylindrical accretion shock of radius |$r_{\rm shock} \sim 50 \, {\rm kpc}$|⁠. The post-shock gas is in virial equilibrium within the potential well set by an isothermal dark-matter filament. The filament line-mass is |$\sim 9\times 10^8\, \text{M}_\odot \, {\rm kpc}^{-1}$|⁠ , the gas fraction within r shock is the universal baryon fraction, and the virial temperature is ∼7 × 105 K. These all match expectations from analytical models for filament properties as a function of halo mass and redshift. The filament cross-section has three radial zones. In the outer 'thermal' (T) zone, |$r \ge 0.65 \, r_{\rm shock}$|⁠ , inward gravity, and ram-pressure forces are overbalanced by outward thermal pressure forces, decelerating the inflowing gas and expanding the shock outwards. In the intermediate 'vortex' (V) zone, 0.25 ≤ r / r shock ≤ 0.65, the velocity field is dominated by a quadrupolar vortex structure due to offset inflow along the sheet through the post-shock gas. The outward force is dominated by centrifugal forces associated with these vortices, with additional contributions from global rotation and thermal pressure. Shear and turbulent forces associated with the vortices act inwards. The inner 'stream' (S) zone, |$r \lt 0.25 \, r_{\rm shock}$|⁠ , is a dense isothermal core, |$T\sim 3 \times 10^4 \, {\rm K}$| and |$n_{\rm H}\sim 0.01 \, {\rm cm^{-3}}$|⁠ , defining the cold streams that feed galaxies. The core is formed by an isobaric cooling flow and is associated with a decrease in outward forces, though exhibiting both inflows and outflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a novel simulation-based cosmological analysis of galaxy–galaxy lensing and galaxy redshift-space clustering. Compared to analysis methods based on perturbation theory, our simulation-based approach allows us to probe a much wider range of scales, |$0.4 \, h^{-1} \, \mathrm{Mpc}$| to |$63 \, h^{-1} \, \mathrm{Mpc}$|⁠ , including highly non-linear scales, and marginalizes over astrophysical effects such as assembly bias. We apply this framework to data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey LOWZ sample cross-correlated with state-of-the-art gravitational lensing catalogues from the Kilo Degree Survey and the Dark Energy Survey. We show that gravitational lensing and redshift-space clustering when analysed over a large range of scales place tight constraints on the growth-of-structure parameter |$S_8 = \sigma _8 \sqrt{\Omega _{\rm m} / 0.3}$|⁠. Overall, we infer S 8 = 0.792 ± 0.022 when analysing the combination of galaxy–galaxy lensing and projected galaxy clustering and S 8 = 0.771 ± 0.027 for galaxy redshift-space clustering. These findings highlight the potential constraining power of full-scale studies over studies analysing only large scales and also showcase the benefits of analysing multiple large-scale structure surveys jointly. Our inferred values for S 8 fall below the value inferred from the CMB, S 8 = 0.834 ± 0.016. While this difference is not statistically significant by itself, our results mirror other findings in the literature whereby low-redshift large-scale structure probes infer lower values for S 8 than the CMB, the so-called S 8-tension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dwarf galaxies are thought to quench primarily due to environmental processes most typically occurring in galaxy groups and clusters or around single, massive galaxies. However, at earlier epochs, (5 < z < 2), the collapse of large-scale structure (forming Zel'dovich sheets and subsequently filaments of the cosmic web) can produce volume-filling accretion shocks which elevate large swaths of the intergalactic medium (IGM) in these structures to a hot (T > 106 K) phase. We study the impact of such an event on the evolution of central dwarf galaxies (5.5 < log  M * < 8.5) in the field using a spatially large, high resolution cosmological zoom simulation which covers the cosmic web environment between two protoclusters. We find that the shock-heated sheet acts as an environmental quencher much like clusters and filaments at lower redshift, creating a population of quenched, central dwarf galaxies. Even massive dwarfs that do not quench are affected by the shock, with reductions to their sSFR and gas accretion. This process can potentially explain the presence of isolated quenched dwarf galaxies, and represents an avenue of pre-processing, via which quenched satellites of bound systems quench before infall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]