Hydrodynamic Simulations of Galaxy Clusters


A page discussing the formation of a cluster of galaxies as seen in different wavebands, along with a QuickTime movie, can be reached by following this link. More discussion of clusters, along with numerous links to other sites, can be found by by following this link.


B134A

This is one of a suite of a simulations of the Ostriker & Steinhardt concordance model (a LCDM model with matter 30 per cent the critical density). The box is 134Mpc/h (comoving) on a side with 2243 gas and 2243 dark matter particles. We have 330 full dumps of all of the particle data, spaced equally in conformal time from z=19 to z=0. This simulation was originally run for the purpose of studying the SZ effect (an introduction to the project can be found in astro-ph/0008133 or you can find my talk on this topic, complete with audio, at the ITP web site). A movie of structure formation in this model is here. For the most massive clusters in the box we have produced maps of Each map is a projection of a cube 3 virial radii across, centered on the point of minimum potential in the 3D distribution. The stretch in each case is logarithmic for the brighter regions, going over to linear for the lower values to de-emphasize them compared to a log plot. The only exception is the Kinetic SZ effect which has both positive and negative regions and so is plotted on a linear scale. The stretch for all quantities is different as the dynamic range in each case is different. Each map is a link to the corresponding FITS image.

The gas and dark matter profiles for the six most massive clusters show that the DM is more concentrated than the gas and is well fit by an NFW profile down to the resolution of the simulation (about 25kpc/h comoving in this simulation).

Also scatter plots showing the gas fraction and the mass-temperature relation for this run and a run with energy injection have been produced (the other injection runs are still being processed).


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