Found 6 talks width keyword n-body simulations
Abstract
I will present an evolutionary model for the origin of Andromeda II, a dSph satellite of M31, involving a merger between two disky dwarf galaxies than explains the origin of prolate rotation recently detected in the kinematic data for And II. The simulation traces the evolution of two dwarfs, whose structural parameters differ only in their disk scale lengths, placed on a radial orbit towards each other with their angular momenta inclined by 90 deg. After 5 Gyr the merger remnant forms a stable triaxial galaxy with rotation only around the longest axis. This prolate rotation is naturally explained as due to the symmetry of the initial configuration which leads to the conservation of angular momentum components along the direction of the merger. The stars originating from the two dwarfs show significantly different surface density profiles while having very similar kinematics in agreement with the properties of separate stellar populations in And II. I will also discuss an alternative scenario for the formation of And II, via tidal stirring of a disky dwarf galaxy. While intrinsic rotation occurs naturally in this model as a remnant of the initial rotation of the disk, it is mostly around the shortest axis of the stellar component. The rotation around the longest axis is induced only occasionally and remains much smaller that the system's velocity dispersion. I conclude that although tidal origin of the velocity distribution in And II cannot be excluded, it is much more naturally explained within the scenario involving a past merger event. Thus, in principle, the presence of prolate rotation in dSph galaxies of the Local Group and beyond may be used as an indicator of major mergers in their history or even as a way to distinguish between the two scenarios of their formation.
Abstract
The accelerated expansion of the Universe discovered in the late 90's has opened one of the most intriguing questions of modern physics. To help to understand its origin, and measure the expansion history of the Universe, large galaxy spectroscopic surveys are being carried out and planned for the future. In this talk, I will review the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) and the requirements to achieve its precise results. I will then describe a sample of large-volume high-resolution N-body simulations available at MultiDark database,
that are useful to test the models. Finally, I will present some work I have been doing aimed at producing a large number of mock galaxy catalogs using an improved lagrangian perturbation theory calibrated with these simulations. Mock galaxy catalogs are essential to produce reliable cosmological constraints from these surveys.
Abstract
Among the different effects of secular evolution of galaxies we find how bars influence enormously their host galaxies. For many years now, it is known how the evolution of bars will produce different boxy/peanut and X-shape bulges. In this context our Milky Way is an example of a boxy bulge, and we will present a self consistent N-body simulation of a barred galaxy that will be compared with some of the Milky Way available data. We will compare the model in terms of morphology and structure, kinematics and finally metallicity gradients.
Abstract
The coalescence of a massive black hole (MBH) binary leads to the gravitational-wave recoil of the system and its ejection from the galaxy core. We have carried out N-body simulations of the motion of a M=3.7 M⊙ MBH remnant in the “Via Lactea I” Milky Way-sized halo. The hole receives a kick velocity of Vkick = 80, 120, 200, 300, and 400 km/s at redshift 1.5, and its orbit is followed for over 1 Gyr within a “live” host halo, subject only to gravity and dynamical friction against the dark matter background. We show that, owing to asphericities in the dark matter potential, the orbit of the MBH is highly non-radial, resulting in a significantly increased decay timescale compared to a spherical halo. The simulations are used to construct a semi-analytic model of the motion of the MBH in a time-varying triaxial Navarro-Frenk-White dark matter halo plus a spherical stellar bulge, where the dynamical friction force is calculated directly from the velocity dispersion tensor. Such a model should offer a realistic picture of the dynamics of kicked MBHs in situations where gas drag, friction by disk stars, and the flattening of the central cusp by the returning hole are all negligible effects. We find that, in a Milky Way-sized galaxy, a recoiling hole carrying a gaseous disk of initial mass ~2 MBH may shine as a quasar for a substantial fraction of its “wandering” phase. The long decay timescales of recoiling MBHs predicted by this study may thus be favorable to the detection of off-nuclear quasar activity.
Abstract
The standard model of cosmology -- the ``Lambda cold dark matter'' model -- is based on the idea that the dark matter is a collisionless elementary particle, probably a supersymmetric particle. This model (which mostly dates back to an early workshop in Santa Barbara in the 1980s) has been famously verified by observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation and the large-scale distribution of galaxies. However, the model has yet to be tested conclusively on the small scales appropriate to most astronomical objects, such as galaxies and clusters. I will review our current understanding of the distribution of dark matter on small scales which derives largely from large cosmological N-body simulations and I will discuss prospects for detecting dark matter, either through its gravitational effect on galaxies and clusters or, more directly, through gamma-ray annihilation radiation.
Abstract
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is currently the largest spectroscopic survey of extragalactic objects and one of the most ambitious observational programs ever undertaken in astronomy, measuring about 1 million redshifts and thus providing a three dimensional mapping of the local universe up to a depth of several hundreds of Mpc. The main characteristic of galaxy distribution in this survey, and in the Two degree Field Galaxy redshift Survey completed few years ago, is that large scale structures have been found to extend to scales of the order of hundreds of mega parsecs. However the standard determination of a characteristic length scale, statistically describing galaxy correlations, is of only few mega parsecs: the standard explanation of this apparent mismatch is that large scale structures have small amplitude relative to the average density. We show that, in the newest galaxy samples, large scale structures are quite typical and correspond to large fluctuation in the galaxy density field, making the standard interpretation untenable. We show that the standard statistical analysis is affected by systematics which are due to inconsistent assumptions. We point out that standard theoretical models of structure formation are unable to explain the existence of the large fluctuations in the galaxy density field detected in these samples. This conclusion is reached in two ways: by considering the scale, determined by a linear perturbation analysis of a self-gravitating fluid, below which large fluctuations are expected in standard models and through the determination of statistical properties of mock galaxy catalogs generated from cosmological N-body simulations. Finally we discuss the implications of this results in relation to recent attempts to describe inhomogeneous models in general relativity and to the recent discoveries of large scale coherent bulk flows.« Newer Older »
Upcoming talks
No talks scheduled for the next days.
Recent Colloquia
Recent Talks
