We develop a parameter-free analytic model to include the effects of mergers into the theoretical modelling of the X-ray temperature function of galaxy clusters. We include this description into our model for the cluster population based on fluctuations of the gravitational potential, which avoids any reference to mass. Comparisons with a numerical simulation reveal that the theoretical model is in good agreement with the simulation results. We show that building the model on the dynamics of spherical rather than ellipsoidal collapse yields better results if emission-weighted temperatures are used, while ellipsoidal collapse yields good agreement between model and simulation for mass-weighted temperatures. Analysing two different samples of X-ray clusters, we quantify the influence of mergers and a conversion between different temperature definitions on the joint determination of Omega_m0 and sigma_8. If effects of mergers are included, temperature functions based on cluster masses and on the gravitational potential built on spherical collapse are in good agreement with other cosmological probes without any conversion of temperatures.
Aims: We discuss the dependence of shocks, cosmic rays acceleration and turbulence on the dynamical state of the host clusters. Method: We perform cosmological simulations with the grid code ENZO 1.5, with a mesh refinement scheme tailored to follow at high resolution shocks and turbulence developed in the clusters volume. Results: Sizable differences are found when some important properties, connected to non-thermal activity in clusters, are compared for post-merger, merging and relaxing systems.
Utilizing a high-resolution (114 pc/h) adaptive mesh-refinement cosmological galaxy formation simulation of the standard cold dark matter model with a large (2000-3000 galaxies with stellar mass greater than 1e9 Msun) statistical sample, we examine the role of major mergers in driving star formation at z>1 in a cosmological setting, after validating that some of the key properties of simulated galaxies are in reasonable agreement with observations, including luminosity functions, SF history, effective sizes and damped Lyman alpha systems. We find that major mergers have a relatively modest eff…
Dark matter haloes in cosmological N-body simulations are affected by processes such as mergers, accretion and the gravitational interaction with baryonic matter. Typically the analysis of dark matter haloes is performed in spherical or elliptical bins and the velocity distributions are often assumed to be constant within those bins. However, the velocity anisotropy, which describes differences between the radial and tangential velocity dispersion, has recently been show to have a strong dependence on direction in the triaxial halos formed in cosmological simulations. In this study we derive p…
We present a new approach to study galaxy evolution in a cosmological context. We combine cosmological merger trees and semi-analytic models of galaxy formation to provide the initial conditions for multi-merger hydrodynamic simulations. In this way we exploit the advantages of merger simulations (high resolution and inclusion of the gas physics) and semi-analytic models (cosmological background and low computational cost), and integrate them to create a novel tool. This approach allows us to study the evolution of various galaxy properties, including the treatment of the hot gaseous halo from…
Merger tree codes are routinely used to follow the growth and merger of dark matter haloes in simulations of cosmic structure formation. Whereas in Srisawat et. al. we compared the trees built using a wide variety of such codes here we study the influence of the underlying halo catalogue upon the resulting trees. We observe that the specifics of halo finding itself greatly influences the constructed merger trees. We find that the choices made to define the halo mass are of prime importance. For instance, amongst many potential options different finders select self-bound objects or spherical re…
As galaxy formation and evolution over long cosmic time-scales depends to a large degree on the structure of the universe, the assembly history of galaxies is potentially a powerful approach for learning about the universe itself. In this paper we examine the merger history of dark matter halos based on the Extended Press-Schechter formalism as a function of cosmological parameters, redshift and halo mass. We calculate how major halo mergers are influenced by changes in the cosmological values of $Ω_{\rm m}$, $Ω_Λ$, $σ_{8}$, the dark matter particle temperature (warm vs. cold dark matter), and…
Following our previous work(Jiang et al.(2008)), in which we studied the merger time-scale of galaxies in a high-resolution cosmological hydro/N-body simulation, we investigate the potential influence of uncertainties in the numerical implementation of baryonic physics on the merger time-scale. The simulation used in the previous work suffers from the overcooling problem which causes the central galaxies of large halos too massive. This may result in a shortened merger time-scale compared to that in the real universe. We run a similar simulation, but the stellar mass is significantly reduced t…
This paper summarises the potential of the LISA mission to constrain the expansion history of the universe using massive black hole binary mergers as gravitational wave standard sirens. After briefly reviewing the concept of standard siren, the analysis and methodologies of Ref. [1] are briefly outlined to show how LISA can be used as a cosmological probe, while a selection of results taken from Refs. [1,2] is presented in order to estimate the power of LISA in constraining cosmological parameters.
Accretion is thought to primarily contribute to the mass accumulation history of supermassive black holes throughout cosmic time. While this may be true at high redshifts, at lower redshifts and for the most massive black holes mergers themselves might add significantly to the mass budget. We evolve SMBHs from $4 > z > 0$ using merger trees derived from hydrodynamical cosmological simulations of a cluster and void region, scaled to the observed value of the stellar mass fraction to account for overcooling. Mass gains from gas accretion proportional to bulge growth and BH-BH mergers are tracked…
We investigate the influence of major mergers on the radio emission of elliptical galaxies. We use a complete sample of close pairs, which contains 475 merging and 1828 non-merging paired elliptical galaxies of M_r<-21.5 selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In addition, a control sample of 2000 isolated field galaxies is used for comparison. We cross-identify the optical galaxies with the radio surveys of FIRST and NVSS. We find that the radio fraction of merging paired galaxies is about 6%, which is slightly higher than the 5% obtained for non-merging paired galaxies, although these va…
Although a fair amount of work has been devoted to growing Monte-Carlo merger trees which resemble those built from an N-body simulation, comparatively little effort has been invested in quantifying the caveats one necessarily encounters when one extracts trees directly from such a simulation. To somewhat revert the tide, this paper seeks to provide its reader with a comprehensive study of the problems one faces when following this route. The first step to building merger histories of dark matter haloes and their subhaloes is to identify these structures in each of the time outputs (snapshots)…
We present a comparative study of recent works on merger-timescales with dynamical friction and find a strong contrast between idealized/isolated mergers (Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2008) and mergers from a cosmological volume (Jiang et al. 2008). Our study measures the duration of mergers in a cosmological N-body simulation of dark matter, with emphasis on higher redshifts (z < 10) and a lower mass range. In our analysis we consider and compare two merger definitions; tidal disruption and coalescence. We find that the merger-time formula proposed by Jiang et al. (2008) describes our results well a…
Recent work has studied the interplay between a galaxy's history and its observable properties using "genetically modified" cosmological zoom simulations. The approach systematically generates alternative histories for a halo, while keeping its cosmological environment fixed. Applications to date altered linear properties of the initial conditions such as the mean overdensity of specified regions; we extend the formulation to include quadratic features such as local variance, which determines the overall importance of smooth accretion relative to mergers in a galaxy's history. We introduce an …
We examine sources of scatter in scaling relations between galaxy cluster mass and thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect using cluster samples extracted from cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. Overall, the scatter of the mass-SZ scaling relation is well correlated with the scatter in the mass-halo concentration relation with more concentrated halos having stronger integrated SZ signals at fixed mass. Additional sources of intrinsic scatter are projection effects from correlated structures, which cause the distribution of scatter to deviate from log-normality and skew it towards higher in…
I highlight three results from cosmological hydrodynamic simulations that yield a realistic red sequence of galaxies: 1) Major galaxy mergers are not responsible for shutting off star-formation and forming the red sequence. Starvation in hot halos is. 2) Massive galaxies grow substantially (about a factor of 2 in mass) after being quenched, primarily via minor (1:5) mergers. 3) Hot halo quenching naturally explains why galaxies are red when they either (a) are massive or (b) live in dense environments.
We perform collisionless N-body simulations to investigate whether binary mergers between rotationally-supported dwarfs can lead to the formation of dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). Our simulation campaign is based on a hybrid approach combining cosmological simulations and controlled numerical experiments. We select merger events from a Constrained Local UniversE (CLUES) simulation of the Local Group (LG) and record the properties of the interacting dwarf-sized halos. This information is subsequently used to seed controlled experiments of binary encounters between dwarf galaxies consisting …
Recently, Thornton et al. reported the detection of four fast radio bursts (FRBs). The dispersion measures indicate that the sources of these FRBs are at cosmological distance. Given the large full sky event rate ~ 10^4 sky^-1 day^-1, the FRBs are a promising target for multi-messenger astronomy. Here we propose double degenerate, binary white-dwarf (WD) mergers as the source of FRBs, which are produced by coherent emission from the polar region of a rapidly rotating, magnetized massive WD formed after the merger. The basic characteristics of the FRBs, such as the energetics, emission duration…
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) at cosmological distances have recently been discovered, whose duration is about milliseconds. We argue that the observed short duration is difficult to explain by giant flares of soft gamma-ray repeaters, though their event rate and energetics are consistent with FRBs. Here we discuss binary neutron star (NS-NS) mergers as a possible origin of FRBs. The FRB rate is within the plausible range of NS-NS merger rate and its cosmological evolution, while a large fraction of NS-NS mergers must produce observable FRBs. A likely radiation mechanism is coherent radio emission …
Which mechanism(s) are mainly driving nuclear activity in the centres of galaxies is a major unsettled question. In this study, we investigate the statistical relevance of galaxy mergers for fuelling gas onto the central few kpc of a galaxy, potentially resulting in an active galactic nucleus (AGN). To robustly address that, we employ large-scale cosmological hydrodynamic simulations from the Magneticum Pathfinder set, including models for BH accretion and AGN feedback. Our simulations predict that for luminous AGN ($L_{\rm AGN} > 10^{45} {\rm erg/s}$) at $z = 2$, more than 50 per cent of thei…
Dark matter subhalos are the remnants of (incomplete) halo mergers. Identifying them and establishing their evolutionary links in the form of merger trees is one of the most important applications of cosmological simulations. The Hierachical Bound-Tracing (HBT) code identifies halos as they form and tracks their evolution as they merge, simultaneously detecting subhalos and building their merger trees. Here we present a new implementation of this approach, HBT+, that is much faster, more user friendly, and more physically complete than the original code. Applying HBT+ to cosmological simulatio…
We consider the evolution of cosmological gravitational waves in scalar-tensor theory and $F(R)$ gravity theory as typical models of the modified gravity. Although the propagation speed is not changed from the speed of light, the propagation phase changes when we compare the propagation in these modified gravity theories with the propagation in the $Λ$CDM model. The phase change might be detected in future observations.
The absolute magnitude of the brightest galaxy of clusters varies remarkably little and is nearly independent of all other physical properties of the cluster as, e.g., its spatial extension or its richness. The question arises whether the observed small scatter is compatible with the assumption of dynamical evolution of the cluster. This is investigated with the help of statistical analysis of the results of cluster simulation. The underlying interaction process is merging (and also destruction) of smaller galaxies forming the giant galaxy. The cluster itself is supposed to be in virial equili…
We use semi-analytic models and cosmological merger trees to provide the initial conditions for multi-merger numerical hydrodynamic simulations, and exploit these simulations to explore the effect of galaxy interaction and merging on star formation (SF). We compute numerical realisations of twelve merger trees from z=1.5 to z=0. We include the effects of the large hot gaseous halo around all galaxies, following recent obervations and predictions of galaxy formation models. We find that including the hot gaseous halo has a number of important effects. Firstly, as expected, the star formation ra…
We introduce and apply a new approach to probe the response of galactic stellar haloes to the interplay between cosmological merger histories and galaxy formation physics. We perform dark matter-only, zoomed simulations of two Milky Way-mass hosts and make targeted, controlled changes to their cosmological histories using the genetic modification technique. Populating each history's stellar halo with a semi-empirical, particle tagging approach then enables a controlled study, with all instances converging to the same large-scale structure, dynamical and stellar mass at $z=0$ as their reference…
The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) observable-mass (Y-M) scaling relation is a promising technique for obtaining mass estimates for large samples of galaxy clusters and holds a key to studying the nature of dark matter and dark energy. However, cosmological inference based on SZE cluster surveys is limited by our incomplete knowledge of bias, scatter, and evolution in the Y-M relation. In this work, we investigate the effects of galaxy cluster mergers on the scaling relation using the Omega500 high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamic simulation. We show that the non-thermal pressure associat…
Tracking the formation and evolution of dark matter haloes is a critical aspect of any analysis of cosmological $N$-body simulations. In particular, the mass assembly of a halo and its progenitors, encapsulated in the form of its merger tree, serves as a fundamental input for constructing semi-analytic models of galaxy formation and, more generally, for building mock catalogues that emulate galaxy surveys. We present an algorithm for constructing halo merger trees from AbacusSummit, the largest suite of cosmological $N$-body simulations performed to date consisting of nearly 60 trillion partic…
The identification of the electromagnetic counterpart candidate ZTF19abanrhr to the binary black hole merger GW190521 opens the possibility to infer cosmological parameters from this standard siren with a uniquely identified host galaxy. The distant merger allows for cosmological inference beyond the Hubble constant. Here we show that the three-dimensional spatial location of ZTF19abanrhr calculated from the electromagnetic data remains consistent with the updated sky localization of GW190521 provided by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration. If ZTF19abanrhr is associated with the GW190521 merger and a…
We examine the clustering properties of a population of quasars drawn from fully hydrodynamic cosmological simulations that directly follow black hole growth. We find that the black hole correlation function is best described by two distinct components: contributions from BH pairs occupying the same dark matter halo ('1-halo term') which dominate at scales below 300 kpc/h, and contributions from BHs occupying separate halos ('2-halo term') which dominate at larger scales. From the 2-halo BH term we find a typical host halo mass for faint-end quasars (those probed in our simulation volumes) ran…
With the detection of gravitational wave (GW) GW170817 and its associated electromagnetic (EM) counterparts from a binary neutron star (NS) merger, the "standard siren" method for Hubble-constant measurements is expected to play a role in the Hubble-constant tension in the next few years. One intriguing proposal put forward in multiple studies is to use an NS merger's optical counterpart, known as a kilonova, as a standard candle, because its absolute magnitude can in principle be calculated from simulations. In this work, I detail the statistical framework for performing joint standard-candle…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitous in galaxies with a sizable mass. It is expected that a pair of SMBHs originally in the nuclei of two merging galaxies would form a binary and eventually coalesce via a burst of gravitational waves. So far theoretical models and simulations have been unable to predict directly the SMBH merger timescale from ab-initio galaxy formation theory, focusing only on limited phases of the orbital decay of SMBHs under idealized conditions of the galaxy hosts. The predicted SMBH merger timescales are long, of order Gyrs, which could be problematic for future…
We present a new suite of cosmological zoom-in hydrodynamical ($\approx 20\, \mathrm{pc}$ spatial resolution) simulations of Milky-Way mass galaxies to study how a varying mass ratio for a Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus (GSE) progenitor impacts the $z=0$ chemodynamics of halo stars. Using the genetic modification approach, we create five cosmological histories for a Milky-Way-mass dark matter halo ($M_{200} \approx 10^{12} \, M_\mathrm{\odot}$), incrementally increasing the stellar mass ratio of a $z\approx2$ merger from 1:25 to 1:2, while fixing the galaxy's final dynamical, stellar mass and large-sc…
A common approach in semi-analytic modeling of galaxy formation is to construct Monte Carlo realizations of merger histories of dark matter halos whose masses are sampled from a halo mass function. Both the mass function itself, and the merger rates used to construct merging histories are calibrated to N-body simulations. Typically, "backsplash" halos (those which were once subhalos within a larger halo, but which have since moved outside of the halo) are counted in both the halo mass function, and in the merger rates (or, equivalently, progenitor mass functions). This leads to a double-counti…
We present a statistical analysis of flybys of dark matter halos compared to mergers using cosmological $N$-body simulations. We mainly focus on gravitationally interacting target halos with mass of $10^{10.8}-10^{13.0}h^{-1}M_{\odot}$, and their neighbors are counted only when the mass ratio is 1:3$-$3:1 and the distance is less than the sum of the virial radii of target and neighbor. The neighbors are divided into the flyby or merger samples if the pair's total energy is greater or smaller, respectively, than the capture criterion with consideration of dynamical friction. The main results ar…
I review the subject of the cosmological evolution of galaxies, including different aspects of growth in disk galaxies, by focussing on the angular momentum problem, mergers, and their by-products. I discuss the alternative to merger-driven growth -- cold accretion and related issues. In the follow-up, I review possible feedback mechanisms and their role in galaxy evolution. Special attention is paid to high-redshift galaxies and their properties. In the next step, I discuss a number of processes, gas- and stellar-dynamical, within the central kiloparsec of disk galaxies, and their effect on t…
The contribution of major mergers to galaxy mass assembly along cosmic time is an important ingredient to the galaxy evolution scenario. We aim to measure the evolution of the merger rate for both luminosity/mass selected galaxy samples and investigate its dependence with the local environment. We use a sample of 10644 spectroscopically observed galaxies from the zCOSMOS redshift survey to identify pairs of galaxies destined to merge, using only pairs for which the velocity difference and projected separation of both components with a confirmed spectroscopic redshift indicate a high probabilit…
Cosmological N-body simulations rank among the most computationally intensive efforts today. A key challenge is the analysis of structure, substructure, and the merger history for many billions of compact particle clusters, called halos. Effectively representing the merging history of halos is essential for many galaxy formation models used to generate synthetic sky catalogs, an important application of modern cosmological simulations. Generating realistic mock catalogs requires computing the halo formation history from simulations with large volumes and billions of halos over many time steps,…
According to the hierarchical model, small galaxies form first and merge together to form bigger objects. In parallel, galaxies assemble their mass through accretion from cosmic filaments. Recently, the increased spatial resolution of the cosmological simulations have emphasised that a large fraction of cold gas can be accreted by galaxies. In order to compare the role of both phenomena and the corresponding star formation history, one has to detect the structures in the numerical simulations and to follow them in time, by building a merger tree.
Massive galaxies today typically are not forming stars despite being surrounded by hot gaseous halos with short central cooling times. This likely owes to some form of "quenching feedback" such as merger-driven quasar activity or radio jets emerging from central black holes. Here we implement heuristic prescriptions for these phenomena on-the-fly within cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. We constrain them by comparing to observed luminosity functions and color-magnitude diagrams from SDSS. We find that quenching from mergers alone does not produce a realistic red sequence, because 1 - 2 Gy…
Gravitational collapse of a massive primordial gas cloud is thought to be a promising path for the formation of supermassive blackholes in the early universe. We study conditions for the so-called direct collapse (DC) blackhole formation in a fully cosmological context. We combine a semianalytic model of early galaxy formation with halo merger trees constructed from dark matter $N$-body simulations. We locate a total of 68 possible DC sites in a volume of $20\;h^{-1}\;\mathrm{Mpc}$ on a side. We then perform hydrodynamics simulations for 42 selected halos to study in detail the evolution of th…
Halo mergers and shock waves play a crucial role in the process of hierarchical clustering. Hydrodynamical simulations are the principal investigation tool in this field for theoreticians, and predict that a by-product of cluster formation and virialisation is the injection of turbulence in the cosmic flow. Here I will summarise results from a series of recent works focused on the main stirring mechanisms acting on baryons: minor and major cluster mergers, and curved shocks. Unresolved turbulence has been treated with the implementation of a subgrid scale model. Recent simulations show that th…
We present a detailed two-dimensional stellar dynamical analysis of a sample of 44 cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of individual central galaxies and their satellites. Kinematic maps of the stellar line-of-sight velocity, velocity dispersion, and higher-order Gauss-Hermite moments $h_3$ and $h_4$ are constructed for each central galaxy and for the most massive satellites. The amount of rotation is quantified using the $λ_{\mathrm{R}}$-parameter. The velocity, velocity dispersion, $h_3$, and $h_4$ fields of the simulated galaxies show a diversity similar to observed kinematic maps of ea…
Learning the Universe with cosmological rescaling of merger trees and semi-analytic galaxy formation models
University of Oxford（牛津大学）；Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute（平顿研究所计算天体物理中心）；Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University（普林斯顿大学天体物理科学系）；Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University（哥伦比亚大学天体物理实验室）；Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC)（圣塞巴斯蒂安国际物理中心）；IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science（伊克巴斯基克，巴斯克科学基金会）；Facultad de Física, Universidad de Sevilla（塞维利亚大学物理学院）
We derived solutions for the Smoluchowski kinetic equation for the mass function of galaxies, which describes mergers in differential approximation, where mergers with low-mass galaxies are the dominant factor. The evolution of the initial distribution is analyzed as well as the influence of the source represented by galaxies (halos) that separate from the global cosmological expansion. It is shown that the evolution of the slope of the power-law part of the luminosity function at a constant mass-to-luminosity ratio observed in the Ultra Deep Hubble Field can be described as a result of explos…
Hierarchical structure formation theory is based on the notion that mergers drive galaxy evolution, so a considerable framework of semi-analytic models and N-body simulations has been constructed to calculate how mergers transform a growing galaxy. However, galaxy mergers are only one type of major dynamical interaction between halos -- another class of encounter, a close flyby, has been largely ignored. We analyze a 50 Mpc/h, $1024^3$ collisionless cosmological simulation and find that the number of close flyby interactions is comparable to, or even surpasses, the number of mergers for halo m…
The rate of merger events observed by LIGO/Virgo can be used in order to probe the fraction $f$ of dark mater in the form of Primordial Black Holes. Here, we consider the merger rate of PBH binaries, accounting for the effect of cosmological perturbations on their initial eccentricity $e$. The torque on the binaries receives significant contributions from a wide range of scales, that goes from the size of the horizon at the time when the binary forms, down to the co-moving size of the binary. In scenarios where PBH are formed from adiabatic perturbations, it is natural to expect an enhancement…
The LIGO/VIRGO collaboration has recently announced the detection of gravitational waves from a neutron star-neutron star merger (GW170817) and the simultaneous measurement of an optical counterpart (the gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A). The close arrival time of the gravitational and electromagnetic waves limits the difference in speed of photons and gravitons to be less than about one part in $10^{15}$. This has three important implications for cosmological scalar-tensor gravity theories that are often touted as dark energy candidates and alternatives to $Λ$CDM. First, for the most general scala…
Intrinsic handedness in O1-O4a black-hole mergers: probing orbital precession, remnant retention in dense environments and cosmological mirror asymmetry
Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela（加利西亚高等物理研究所，圣地亚哥-德孔波斯特拉大学）；The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学）；Universidad Carlos III de Madrid（马德里卡洛斯三世大学）；Universitat de València（瓦伦西亚大学）；Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)（马克斯·普朗克引力物理研究所（爱因斯坦研究所））
We study merger histories of dark-matter haloes in a suite of N-body simulations that span different cosmological models. The simulated cases include the up-to-date WMAP5 cosmology and other test cases based on the Einstein-deSitter cosmology with different power spectra. We provide a robust fitting function for the conditional mass function (CMF) of progenitor haloes of a given halo. This fit is valid for the different cosmological models and for different halo masses and redshifts, and it is a significant improvement over earlier estimates. Based on this fit, we develop a simple and accurate…
A self-similar spherical collapse model predicts a dark matter (DM) splashback and accretion shock in the outskirts of galaxy clusters while misses a key ingredient of structure formation - processes associated with mergers. To fill this gap, we perform simulations of merging self-similar clusters and investigate their DM and gas evolution in an idealized cosmological context. Our simulations show that the cluster rapidly contracts during the major merger and the splashback radius $r_{\rm sp}$ decreases, approaching the virial radius $r_{\rm vir}$. While $r_{\rm sp}$ correlates with a smooth m…
Hierarchical structure formation theory is based on the notion that mergers drive galaxy evolution, so a considerable framework of semi-analytic models and N-body simulations has been constructed to calculate how mergers transform a growing galaxy. However, galaxy mergers are only one type of major dynamical interaction between halos -- another class of encounter, a close flyby, has been largely ignored. We use cosmological N-body simulations to reconstruct the entire dynamical interaction history of dark matter halos. We present a careful method of identifying and tracking a dark matter halo …
Contradictory results have been reported on the time evolution of the alignment between clusters and their Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). We study this topic by analyzing cosmological hydro-simulations of 24 massive clusters with $M_{200}|_{z=0} \gtrsim 10^{15}\, M_\odot$, plus 5 less massive with $1 \times 10^{14} \lesssim M_{200}|_{z=0} \lesssim 7 \times 10^{14}\, M_\odot$, which have already proven to produce realistic BCG masses. We compute the BCG alignment with both the distribution of cluster galaxies and the dark matter (DM) halo. At redshift $z=0$, the major axes of the simulated BCG…
In the current concordance cosmology small halos are expected to be completely dark and can significantly perturb low-mass galaxies during minor merger interactions. These interactions may well contribute to the diversity of the dwarf galaxy population. Dwarf galaxies in the field are often observed to have peculiarities in their structure, morphology, and kinematics, as well as strong bursts of star formation without apparent cause. We aim to characterize the signatures of minor mergers of dwarf galaxies with dark satellites to aid their observational identification. We explore and quantify a…
The existence of primordial black holes (PBHs), which may form from the collapse of matter overdensities shortly after the Big Bang, is still under debate. Among the potential signatures of PBHs are gravitational waves (GWs) emitted from binary black hole (BBH) mergers at redshifts $z\gtrsim 30$, where the formation of astrophysical black holes is unlikely. Future ground-based GW detectors, Cosmic Explorer and Einstein Telescope, will be able to observe equal-mass BBH mergers with total mass of $\mathcal{O}(10-100)~M_{\odot}$ at such distances. In this work, we investigate whether the redshift…
