Person:

Hernquist, Lars

We present a detailed comparison between the well-known smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code gadget and the new moving-mesh code arepo on a number of hydrodynamical test problems. Through a variety of numerical experiments with increasing complexity we establish a clear link between simple test problems with known analytic solutions and systematic numerical effects seen in cosmological simulations of galaxy formation. Our tests demonstrate deficiencies of the SPH method in several sectors. These accuracy problems not only manifest themselves in idealized hydrodynamical tests, but also propagate to more realistic simulation set-ups of galaxy formation, ultimately affecting local and global gas properties in the full cosmological framework, as highlighted in companion papers by Vogelsberger et al. and Keres et al. We find that an inadequate treatment of fluid instabilities in gadget suppresses entropy generation by mixing, underestimates vorticity generation in curved shocks and prevents efficient gas stripping from infalling substructures. Moreover, in idealized tests of inside-out disc formation, the convergence rate of gas disc sizes is much slower in gadget due to spurious angular momentum transport. In simulations where we follow the interaction between a forming central disc and orbiting substructures in a massive halo, the final disc morphology is strikingly different in the two codes. In arepo, gas from infalling substructures is readily depleted and incorporated into the host halo atmosphere, facilitating the formation of an extended central disc. Conversely, gaseous sub-clumps are more coherent in gadget simulations, morphologically transforming the central disc as they impact it. The numerical artefacts of the SPH solver are particularly severe for poorly resolved flows, and thus inevitably affect cosmological simulations due to their inherently hierarchical nature. Taken together, our numerical experiments clearly demonstrate that arepo delivers a physically more reliable solution.

The detection of large quantities of dust in z ~ 6 quasars by infrared and radio surveys presents puzzles for the formation and evolution of dust in these early systems. Previously, Li et al. showed that luminous quasars at zgsim 6 can form through hierarchical mergers of gas-rich galaxies, and that these systems are expected to evolve from starburst through quasar phases. Here, we calculate the dust properties of simulated quasars and their progenitors using a three-dimensional Monte Carlo radiative transfer code, ART2 (All-wavelength Radiative Transfer with Adaptive Refinement Tree). ART2 incorporates a radiative equilibrium algorithm which treats dust emission self-consistently, an adaptive grid method which can efficiently cover a large dynamic range in both spatial and density scales, a multiphase model of the interstellar medium which accounts for the observed scaling relations of molecular clouds, and a supernova-origin model for dust which can explain the existence of dust in cosmologically young objects. By applying ART2 to the hydrodynamic simulations of Li et al., we reproduce the observed spectral energy distribution (SED) and inferred dust properties of SDSS J1148+5251, the most distant Sloan quasar. We find that the dust and infrared emission are closely associated with the formation and evolution of the quasar host. The system evolves from a cold to a warm ultraluminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) owing to heating and feedback from stars and the active galactic nucleus (AGN). Furthermore, the AGN activity has significant implications for the interpretation of observation of the hosts. Our results suggest that vigorous star formation in merging progenitors is necessary to reproduce the observed dust properties of z ~ 6 quasars, supporting a merger-driven origin for luminous quasars at high redshifts and the starburst-to-quasar evolutionary hypothesis.

We present a constrained transport (CT) algorithm for solving the 3D ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations on a moving mesh, which maintains the divergence-free condition on the magnetic field to machine-precision. Our CT scheme uses an unstructured representation of the magnetic vector potential, making the numerical method simple and computationally efficient. The scheme is implemented in the moving mesh code arepo. We demonstrate the performance of the approach with simulations of driven MHD turbulence, a magnetized disc galaxy, and a cosmological volume with primordial magnetic field. We compare the outcomes of these experiments to those obtained with a previously implemented Powell divergence-cleaning scheme. While CT and the Powell technique yield similar results in idealized test problems, some differences are seen in situations more representative of astrophysical flows. In the turbulence simulations, the Powell cleaning scheme artificially grows the mean magnetic field, while CT maintains this conserved quantity of ideal MHD. In the disc simulation, CT gives slower magnetic field growth rate and saturates to equipartition between the turbulent kinetic energy and magnetic energy, whereas Powell cleaning produces a dynamically dominant magnetic field. Such difference has been observed in adaptive-mesh refinement codes with CT and smoothed-particle hydrodynamics codes with divergence-cleaning. In the cosmological simulation, both approaches give similar magnetic amplification, but Powell exhibits more cell-level noise. CT methods in general are more accurate than divergence-cleaning techniques, and, when coupled to a moving mesh can exploit the advantages of automatic spatial/temporal adaptivity and reduced advection errors, allowing for improved astrophysical MHD simulations.

We study the properties of gas in and around 1012 M⊙ haloes at z = 2 using a suite of high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamic ‘zoom’ simulations. We quantify the thermal and dynamical structure of these gaseous reservoirs in terms of their mean radial distributions and angular variability along different sightlines. With each halo simulated at three levels of increasing resolution, the highest reaching a baryon mass resolution of ∼10 000 solar masses, we study the interface between filamentary inflow and the quasi-static hot halo atmosphere. We highlight the discrepancy between the spatial resolution available in the halo gas as opposed to within the galaxy itself, and find that stream morphologies become increasingly complex at higher resolution, with large coherent flows revealing density and temperature structure at progressively smaller scales. Moreover, multiple gas components co-exist at the same radius within the halo, making radially averaged analyses misleading. This is particularly true where the hot, quasi-static, high entropy halo atmosphere interacts with cold, rapidly inflowing, low entropy accretion. Haloes at this mass have a well-defined virial shock, associated with a sharp jump in temperature and entropy at ≳ 1.25 rvir. The presence, radius, and radial width of this boundary feature, however, vary not only from halo to halo, but also as a function of angular direction, covering roughly ∼75 per cent of the 4π sphere. We investigate the process of gas virialization as imprinted in the halo structure, and discuss different modes for the accretion of gas from the intergalactic medium.

Comparisons between observational surveys and galaxy formation models find that dark matter haloes’ mass can largely explain their galaxies’ stellar mass. However, it remains uncertain whether additional environmental variables, known as assembly bias, are necessary to explain other galaxy properties. We use the Illustris simulation to investigate the role of assembly bias in producing galactic conformity by considering 18 000 galaxies with Mstellar > 2 × 109 M⊙. We find a significant signal of galactic conformity: out to distances of about 10 Mpc, the mean red fraction of galaxies around redder galaxies is higher than around bluer galaxies at fixed stellar mass. Dark matter haloes exhibit an analogous conformity signal, in which the fraction of haloes formed at earlier times (old haloes) is higher around old haloes than around younger ones at fixed halo mass. A plausible interpretation of galactic conformity is the combination of the halo conformity signal with the galaxy colour–halo age relation: at fixed stellar mass, particularly towards the low-mass end, Illustris’ galaxy colours correlate with halo age, with the reddest galaxies (often satellites) preferentially found in the oldest haloes. We explain the galactic conformity effect with a simple semi-empirical model, assigning stellar mass via halo mass (abundance matching) and galaxy colour via halo age (age matching). Regarding comparison to observations, we conclude that the adopted selection/isolation criteria, projection effects, and stacking techniques can have a significant impact on the measured amplitude of the conformity signal.

Supermassive black hole (BH) mergers produce powerful gravitational wave emission. Asymmetry in this emission imparts a recoil kick to the merged BH, which can eject the BH from its host galaxy altogether. Recoiling BHs could be observed as offset active galactic nuclei (AGN). Several candidates have been identified, but systematic searches have been hampered by large uncertainties regarding their observability. By extracting merging BHs and host galaxy properties from the Illustris cosmological simulations, we have developed a comprehensive model for recoiling AGN. Here, for the first time, we model the effects of BH spin alignment and recoil dynamics based on the gas richness of host galaxies. We predict that if BH spins are not highly aligned, seeing-limited observations could resolve offset AGN, making them promising targets for all-sky surveys. For randomly oriented spins, ≲ 10 spatially offset AGN may be detectable in Hubble Space Telescope-Cosmological Evolution Survey, and >103 could be found with the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), Euclid, and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). Nearly a thousand velocity offset AGN are predicted within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) footprint; the rarity of large broad-line offsets among SDSS quasars is likely due in part to selection effects but suggests that spin alignment plays a role in suppressing recoils. None the less, in our most physically motivated model where alignment occurs only in gas-rich mergers, hundreds of offset AGN should be found in all-sky surveys. Our findings strongly motivate a dedicated search for recoiling AGN.

We use the Illustris simulation to study the relative contributions of in situ star formation and stellar accretion to the build-up of galaxies over an unprecedentedly wide range of masses (M* = 109-1012 M⊙), galaxy types, environments, and assembly histories. We find that the ‘two-phase’ picture of galaxy formation predicted by some models is a good approximation only for the most massive galaxies in our simulation – namely, the stellar mass growth of galaxies below a few times 1011 M⊙ is dominated by in situ star formation at all redshifts. The fraction of the total stellar mass of galaxies at z = 0 contributed by accreted stars shows a strong dependence on galaxy stellar mass, ranging from about 10 per cent for Milky Way-sized galaxies to over 80 per cent for M* ≈ 1012 M⊙ objects, yet with a large galaxy-to-galaxy variation. At a fixed stellar mass, elliptical galaxies and those formed at the centres of younger haloes exhibit larger fractions of ex situ stars than disc-like galaxies and those formed in older haloes. On average, ∼50 per cent of the ex situ stellar mass comes from major mergers (stellar mass ratio μ > 1/4), ∼20 per cent from minor mergers (1/10 < μ < 1/4), ∼20 per cent from very minor mergers (μ < 1/10), and ∼10 per cent from stars that were stripped from surviving galaxies (e.g. flybys or ongoing mergers). These components are spatially segregated, with in situ stars dominating the innermost regions of galaxies, and ex situ stars being deposited at larger galactocentric distances in order of decreasing merger mass ratio.

We study the stellar angular momentum of thousands of galaxies in the Illustris cosmological simulation, which captures gravitational and gas dynamics within galaxies, as well as feedback from stars and black holes. We find that the angular momentum of the simulated galaxies matches observations well, and in particular two distinct relations are found for late-type versus early-type galaxies. The relation for late-type galaxies corresponds to the value expected from full conservation of the specific angular momentum generated by cosmological tidal torques. The relation for early-type galaxies corresponds to retention of only ~30% of that, but we find that those early-type galaxies with low angular momentum at z = 0 nevertheless reside at high redshift on the late-type relation. Some of them abruptly lose angular momentum during major mergers. To gain further insight, we explore the scaling relations in simulations where the galaxy formation physics is modified with respect to the fiducial model. We find that galactic winds with high mass-loading factors are essential for obtaining the high angular momentum relation typical for late-type galaxies, while active galactic nucleus feedback largely operates in the opposite direction. Hence, feedback controls the stellar angular momentum of galaxies, and appears to be instrumental for establishing the Hubble sequence.

We report Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of polarized dust emission from the protostellar source Ser-emb 8 at a linear resolution of 140 au. Assuming models of dust-grain alignment hold, the observed polarization pattern gives a projected view of the magnetic field structure in this source. Contrary to expectations based on models of strongly magnetized star formation, the magnetic field in Ser-emb 8 does not exhibit an hourglass morphology. Combining the new ALMA data with previous observational studies, we can connect magnetic field structure from protostellar core (̃80,000 au) to disk (̃100 au) scales. We compare our observations with four magnetohydrodynamic gravo-turbulence simulations made with the AREPO code that have initial conditions ranging from super-Alfvénic (weakly magnetized) to sub-Alfvénic (strongly magnetized). These simulations achieve the spatial dynamic range necessary to resolve the collapse of protostars from the parsec scale of star-forming clouds down to the ̃100 au scale probed by ALMA. Only in the very strongly magnetized simulation do we see both the preservation of the field direction from cloud to disk scales and an hourglass-shaped field at <1000 au scales. We conduct an analysis of the relative orientation of the magnetic field and the density structure in both the Ser-emb 8 ALMA observations and the synthetic observations of the four AREPO simulations. We conclude that the Ser-emb 8 data are most similar to the weakly magnetized simulations, which exhibit random alignment, in contrast to the strongly magnetized simulation, where the magnetic field plays a role in shaping the density structure in the source. In the weak-field case, it is turbulence—not the magnetic field—that shapes the material that forms the protostar, highlighting the dominant role that turbulence can play across many orders of magnitude in spatial scale.

Hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation have now reached sufficient volume to make precision predictions for clustering on cosmologically relevant scales. Here, we use our new IllustrisTNG simulations to study the non-linear correlation functions and power spectra of baryons, dark matter, galaxies, and haloes over an exceptionally large range of scales. We find that baryonic effects increase the clustering of dark matter on small scales and damp the total matter power spectrum on scales up to k ∼ 10 h Mpc−1 by 20 per cent. The non-linear two-point correlation function of the stellar mass is close to a power-law over a wide range of scales and approximately invariant in time from very high redshift to the present. The two-point correlation function of the simulated galaxies agrees well with Sloan Digital Sky Survey at its mean redshift z ≃ 0.1, both as a function of stellar mass and when split according to galaxy colour, apart from a mild excess in the clustering of red galaxies in the stellar mass range of109–1010 h−2 M⊙. Given this agreement, the TNG simulations can make valuable theoretical predictions for the clustering bias of different galaxy samples. We find that the clustering length of the galaxy autocorrelation function depends strongly on stellar mass and redshift. Its power-law slope γ is nearly invariant with stellar mass, but declines from γ ∼ 1.8 at redshift z = 0 to γ ∼ 1.6 at redshift z ∼ 1, beyond which the slope steepens again. We detect significant scale dependences in the bias of different observational tracers of large-scale structure, extending well into the range of the baryonic acoustic oscillations and causing nominal (yet fortunately correctable) shifts of the acoustic peaks of around ∼ 5 per cent.