Halo Shapes, Dynamics and Environment [chapter]

M. Plionis, C. Ragone, S. Basilakos
Groups of Galaxies in the Nearby Universe  
In the hierarchical structure formation model cosmic halos are supposed to form by accretion of smaller units along anisotropic direction, defined by large-scale filamentary structures. After the epoch of primary mass aggregation (which depend on the cosmological model), violent relaxation processes will tend to alter the halo phase-space configuration producing quasi-spherical halos with a relatively smooth density profiles. Here we attempt to investigate the relation between halos shapes,
more » ... r environment and their dynamical state. To this end we have run a large (L=500 h^-1 Mpc, N_p=512^3 particles) N-body simulation of a flat low-density cold dark matter model with a matter density Ω_ m=1-Ω_Λ=0.3, Hubble constant H_∘=70 km s^-1 Mpc^-1 and a normalization parameter of σ_8=0.9. The particle mass is m_ p> 7.7× 10^10 h^-1 M_ comparable to the mass of one single galaxy. The halos are defined using a friends-of-friend algorithm with a linking length given by l=0.17ν̅ where ν̅ is the mean density. This linking length corresponds to an overdensity ρ/ρ_ mean≃ 200 at the present epoch (z=0) and the total number of halos with more than 130 particles (M>3 × 10^13 h^-1 M_) is 57524.
doi:10.1007/978-3-540-71173-5_47 fatcat:bomrro6odvg3fmvhh3dqy3cfk4