Cosmology

Abstract:

We use the Ly-$\alpha$ Mass Association Scheme (LyMAS; Peirani et al. 2014) to predict cross-correlations at $z=2.5$ between dark matter halos and transmitted flux in the Ly-$\alpha$ forest, and compare to cross-correlations measured for quasars and damped Ly-$\alpha$ systems (DLAs) from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) by Font-Ribera et al. (2012, 2013). We calibrate LyMAS using Horizon-AGN hydrodynamical cosmological simulations of a $(100\ h^{-1}\ \mathrm{Mpc})^3$ comoving volume. We apply this calibration to a $(1\ h^{-1}\ \mathrm{Gpc})^3$ simulation realized with $2048^3$ dark matter particles. In the 100 $h^{-1}$ Mpc box, LyMAS reproduces the halo-flux correlations computed from the full hydrodynamic gas distribution very well. In the 1 $h^{-1}$ Gpc box, the amplitude of the large scale cross-correlation tracks the halo bias $b_h$ as expected. We provide empirical fitting functions that describe our numerical results. In the transverse separation bins used for the BOSS analyses, LyMAS cross-correlation predictions follow linear theory accurately down to small scales. Fitting the BOSS measurements requires inclusion of random velocity errors; we find best-fit RMS velocity errors of 399 km s$^{-1}$ and 252 km s$^{-1}$ for quasars and DLAs, respectively. We infer bias-weighted mean halo masses of $M_h/10^{12}\ h^{-1}M_\odot=2.19^{+0.16}_{-0.15}$ and $0.69^{+0.16}_{-0.14}$ for the host halos of quasars and DLAs, with $\sim 0.2$ dex systematic uncertainty associated with redshift evolution, IGM parameters, and selection of data fitting range.

Abstract:

We study how outflows of gas launched from a central galaxy undergoing repeated starbursts propagate through the circumgalactic medium (CGM), using the simulation code RAMSES. We assume that the outflow from the disk can be modelled as a rapidly moving bubble of hot gas at ~ 1 kpc above disk, then ask what happens as it moves out further into the halo around the galaxy on ~ 100 kpc scales. To do this we run 60 two-dimensional simulations scanning over parameters of the outflow. Each of these is repeated with and without radiative cooling, assuming a primordial gas composition to give a lower bound on the importance of cooling. In a large fraction of radiative-cooling cases we are able to form rapidly outflowing cool gas from in situ cooling of the flow. We show that the amount of cool gas formed depends strongly on the ‘burstiness’ of energy injection; sharper, stronger bursts typically lead to a larger fraction of cool gas forming in the outflow. The abundance ratio of ions in the CGM may therefore change in response to the detailed historical pattern of star formation. For instance, outflows generated by star formation with short, intense bursts contain up to 60 per cent of their gas mass at temperatures < 5 X 10^4 K; for near-continuous star formation the figure is ≲ 5 per cent. Further study of cosmological simulations, and of idealised simulations with e.g., metal-cooling, magnetic fields and/or thermal conduction, will help to understand the precise signature of bursty outflows on observed ion abundances.