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arXiv 0812.1750astro-ph
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模拟星系团核心的起源

On the Origin of Cores in Simulated Galaxy Clusters

N. L. Mitchell, I. G. McCarthy, R. G. Bower, T. Theuns, R. A. Crain

摘要:

团内介质的热状态是由气体冷却和加热之间的竞争造成的。加热来自两个不同的来源:来自暗物质晕坍缩的引力加热和来自星系/黑洞形成的热输入。然而,一个长期存在的问题是,基于平滑粒子流体动力学(SPH)和欧拉网格代码的宇宙学模拟预测不同的结果,即使冷却和星系/黑洞加热关闭。在SPH模拟中形成的集群显示近幂律熵分布,而在网格模拟中形成的集群则形成核心,不允许气体达到如此低的熵。由于冷却速率与气体的最小熵密切相关,因此这些差异具有潜在的关键重要性。在本文中,我们调查这种差异的起源。通过比较模拟运行使用GADGET-2 SPH代码和FLASH自适应欧拉网格代码,我们发现,在理想化的合并两个集群的差异。这种差异对我们模拟的分辨率不敏感,也不是由于重力解算器的差异,网格代码的伽利略非不变性,或SPH代码中不合适的人工粘性的影响。相反,我们发现,差异是固有的涡流和流体不稳定性的治疗。这些在SPH模拟中被抑制,而团簇合并在网格模拟中产生强涡流,有效地混合流体并擦除低熵气体。因此,SPH模拟中的粒子与其初始熵保持密切联系,而这种联系在网格模拟中要弱得多。我们讨论了这些结果的潜在深远影响。

英文摘要:

(Abridged) The thermal state of the intracluster medium results from a competition between gas cooling and heating. The heating comes from two distinct sources: gravitational heating from the collapse of the dark matter halo and thermal input from galaxy/black hole formation. However, a long standing problem has been that cosmological simulations based on smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and Eulerian mesh codes predict different results even when cooling and galaxy/black hole heating are switched off. Clusters formed in SPH simulations show near powerlaw entropy profiles, while those formed in mesh simulations develop a core and do not allow gas to reach such low entropies. Since the cooling rate is closely connected to the minimum entropy of the gas, the differences are of potentially key importance. In this paper, we investigate the origin of this discrepancy. By comparing simulations run using the GADGET-2 SPH code and the FLASH adaptive Eulerian mesh code, we show that the discrepancy arises during the idealised merger of two clusters. The difference is not sensitive to the resolution of our simulations, nor is it is due differences in the gravity solvers, Galilean non-invariance of the mesh code, or an effect of unsuitable artificial viscosity in the SPH code. Instead, we find that the difference is inherent to the treatment of eddies and fluid instabilities. These are suppressed in the SPH simulations, while the cluster mergers generate strong vortices in the mesh simulations that efficiently mix the fluid and erase the low entropy gas. Consequently, particles in the SPH simulations retain a close connection to their initial entropy, while this connection is much weaker in the mesh simulations. We discuss the potentially profound implications of these results.

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