COLD DARK-MATTER COSMOLOGY WITH HYDRODYNAMICS AND GALAXY FORMATION - THE EVOLUTION OF THE INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM AND BACKGROUND-RADIATION FIELDS

Citation
Ry. Cen et Jp. Ostriker, COLD DARK-MATTER COSMOLOGY WITH HYDRODYNAMICS AND GALAXY FORMATION - THE EVOLUTION OF THE INTERGALACTIC MEDIUM AND BACKGROUND-RADIATION FIELDS, The Astrophysical journal, 417(2), 1993, pp. 404-414
Citations number
37
Categorie Soggetti
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Journal title
ISSN journal
0004637X
Volume
417
Issue
2
Year of publication
1993
Part
1
Pages
404 - 414
Database
ISI
SICI code
0004-637X(1993)417:2<404:CDCWHA>2.0.ZU;2-3
Abstract
We have supplemented our code, which computes the evolution of the phy sical state of a representative piece of the universe to include, not only the dynamics of dark matter (with a standard PM code), and the hy drodynamics of the gaseous component (including detailed collisional a nd radiative processes), but also galaxy formation on a heuristic but plausible basis. If, within a cell the ps is Jeans unstable, collapsin g, and cooling rapidly, it is transformed to galaxy subunits, which ar e then followed with a collisionless code. These particles emit UV rad iation and supernova blasts with energy efficiencies (in units of mc2) equal to (epsilon(UV), epsilon(SN)) = (10(-4), 10(-4.5)). This energy input significantly alters some aspects of the simulation; the primar y consequences are to heat and ionize the ps at a much earlier epoch t han if stellar feedback were ignored. We study two representative boxe s with sizes L = (80, 8)h-1 Mpc, in both cases utilizing a 200(3) mesh containing 200(3) dark matter particles and having nominal resolution s of (400, 40)h-1 kpc, respectively, with true resolution approximatel y 2.5 times worse. We adopt the standard CDM perturbation spectrum wit h an amplitude Of sigma8 = (deltaM/M)rms,8 = 0.77, a compromise betwee n the COBE normalization sigma8 = 1.05 and that indicated by the small -scale velocity dispersion (perhaps sigma8 = 0.45). We find that by th e time that 0.2% of the baryons have been transformed to stars at reds hift 8.6, reionization is 1/2 complete, and observed Gunn-Peterson lim its to a redshift of z = 5 am satisfied. Very hot (10(7)-10(8) K) gas is produced by shocks in the clusters, lower temperature (10(6) K) ps from supernova-fed superwinds is in lower density filaments and sheets and photoheated ps (10(4)-10(5) K) fills the voids. The mass fraction s in these components at redshift zero being roughly (29%, 40%, 31%) c orrespond to ps in the temperature ranges (< 10(5.5), 10(5.5)-10(6.5), > 10(6.5)) K. In rich clusters the galaxy and dark matter densities a re more concentrated than the ps density in agreement with gravitation al lens observations. We can combine the observed and computed baryon to total mass ratios with OMEGA(b) from light element nucleosynthesis, and we conclude that we live in an open universe with OMEGA(tot) = (0 .11, 0.24) for h = (1.0, 0.5). While the correspondence between the th ermodynamic properties of gas and radiation fields of this CDM model a nd the real world can be taken as support for the former, it is likely that many of the attributes of this simulation are generic, the resul t of a detailed physical treatment of atomic processes, and will be fo und as well in rival cosmological models.