Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars

Nature volume 435, pages 629–636 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

The cold dark matter model has become the leading theoretical picture for the formation of structure in the Universe. This model, together with the theory of cosmic inflation, makes a clear prediction for the initial conditions for structure formation and predicts that structures grow hierarchically through gravitational instability. Testing this model requires that the precise measurements delivered by galaxy surveys can be compared to robust and equally precise theoretical calculations. Here we present a simulation of the growth of dark matter structure using 2,1603 particles, following them from redshift z = 127 to the present in a cube-shaped region 2.230 billion lightyears on a side. In postprocessing, we also follow the formation and evolution of the galaxies and quasars. We show that baryon-induced features in the initial conditions of the Universe are reflected in distorted form in the low-redshift galaxy distribution, an effect that can be used to constrain the nature of dark energy with future generations of observational surveys of galaxies.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: The dark matter density field on various scales.
Figure 2: Differential halo number density as a function of mass and epoch.
Figure 3: Environment of a ‘first quasar candidate’ at high and low redshifts.
Figure 4: Galaxy two-point correlation function, ξ(r ), at the present epoch as a function of separation r.
Figure 5: Galaxy clustering as a function of luminosity and colour.
Figure 6: Power spectra of the dark matter and galaxy distributions in the baryon oscillation region.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bennett, C. L. et al. First-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations: Preliminary maps and basic results. Astrophys. J. Suppl. 148, 1–27 (2003)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Spergel, D. N. et al. First-year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations: Determination of cosmological parameters. Astrophys. J. Suppl. 148, 175–194 (2003)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Riess, A. G. et al. Observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant. Astron. J. 116, 1009–1038 (1998)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Perlmutter, S. et al. Measurements of omega and lambda from 42 high-redshift supernovae. Astrophys. J. 517, 565–586 (1999)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. White, S. D. M., Navarro, J. F., Evrard, A. E. & Frenk, C. S. The baryon content of galaxy clusters: a challenge to cosmological orthodoxy. Nature 366, 429–433 (1993)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Davis, M., Efstathiou, G., Frenk, C. S. & White, S. D. M. The evolution of large-scale structure in a universe dominated by cold dark matter. Astrophys. J. 292, 371–394 (1985)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Colberg, J. M. et al. Clustering of galaxy clusters in cold dark matter universes. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 319, 209–214 (2000)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Evrard, A. E. et al. Galaxy clusters in Hubble volume simulations: Cosmological constraints from sky survey populations. Astrophys. J. 573, 7–36 (2002)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. Wambsganss, J., Bode, P. & Ostriker, J. P. Giant arc statistics in concord with a concordance lambda cold dark matter universe. Astrophys. J. 606, L93–L96 (2004)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Bond, J. R., Kofman, L. & Pogosyan, D. How filaments of galaxies are woven into the cosmic web. Nature 380, 603–606 (1996)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Jenkins, A. et al. The mass function of dark matter haloes. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 321, 372–384 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Reed, D. et al. Evolution of the mass function of dark matter haloes. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 346, 565–572 (2003)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  13. Sheth, R. K. & Tormen, G. An excursion set model of hierarchical clustering: ellipsoidal collapse and the moving barrier. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 329, 61–75 (2002)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  14. Press, W. H. & Schechter, P. Formation of galaxies and clusters of galaxies by self-similar gravitational condensation. Astrophys. J. 187, 425–438 (1974)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  15. Efstathiou, G. & Rees, M. J. High-redshift quasars in the Cold Dark Matter cosmogony. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 230, 5–11 (1988)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  16. Springel, V., White, S. D. M., Tormen, G. & Kauffmann, G. Populating a cluster of galaxies. – I. Results at z = 0. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 328, 726–750 (2001)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  17. Kauffmann, G. & Haehnelt, M. A unified model for the evolution of galaxies and quasars. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 311, 576–588 (2000)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  18. White, S. D. M. & Frenk, C. S. Galaxy formation through hierarchical clustering. Astrophys. J. 379, 52–79 (1991)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  19. Kauffmann, G., White, S. D. M. & Guiderdoni, B. The formation and evolution of galaxies within merging dark matter haloes. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 264, 201–218 (1993)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Cole, S., Aragon-Salamanca, A., Frenk, C. S., Navarro, J. F. & Zepf, S. E. A recipe for galaxy formation. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 271, 781–806 (1994)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Baugh, C. M., Cole, S. & Frenk, C. S. Evolution of the Hubble sequence in hierarchical models for galaxy formation. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 283, 1361–1378 (1996)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. Somerville, R. S. & Primack, J. R. Semi-analytic modelling of galaxy formation: the local Universe. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 310, 1087–1110 (1999)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Kauffmann, G., Colberg, J. M., Diaferio, A. & White, S. D. M. Clustering of galaxies in a hierarchical universe. – I. Methods and results at z = 0. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 303, 188–206 (1999)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Fan, X. et al. A survey of z > 5.7 quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. II. Discovery of three additional quasars at z > 6. Astron. J. 125, 1649–1659 (2003)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  25. Fan, X. et al. A survey of z > 5.7 quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. III. Discovery of five additional quasars. Astron. J. 128, 515–522 (2004)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Tremaine, S. et al. The slope of the black hole mass versus velocity dispersion correlation. Astrophys. J. 574, 740–753 (2002)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  27. Merritt, D. & Ferrarese, L. Black hole demographics from the MBH-σ relation. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 320, L30–L34 (2001)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  28. Hawkins, E. et al. The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: correlation functions, peculiar velocities and the matter density of the universe. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 346, 78–96 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  29. Benson, A. J., Cole, S., Frenk, C. S., Baugh, C. M. & Lacey, C. G. The nature of galaxy bias and clustering. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 311, 793–808 (2000)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Weinberg, D. H., Davé, R., Katz, N. & Hernquist, L. Galaxy clustering and galaxy bias in a ΛCDM universe. Astrophys. J. 601, 1–21 (2004)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. Padilla, N. D. & Baugh, C. M. The power spectrum of galaxy clustering in the APM survey. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 343, 796–812 (2003)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  32. Zehavi, I. et al. On departures from a power law in the galaxy correlation function. Astrophys. J. 608, 16–24 (2004)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  33. Norberg, P. et al. The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: luminosity dependence of galaxy clustering. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 328, 64–70 (2001)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  34. Zehavi, I. et al. Galaxy clustering in early Sloan Digital Sky Survey redshift data. Astrophys. J. 571, 172–190 (2002)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  35. Madgwick, D. S. et al. The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: galaxy clustering per spectral type. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 344, 847–856 (2003)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  36. de Bernardis, P. et al. A flat Universe from high-resolution maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Nature 404, 955–959 (2000)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  37. Mauskopf, P. D. et al. Measurement of a peak in the Cosmic Microwave Background power spectrum from the North American test flight of Boomerang. Astrophys. J. 536, L59–L62 (2000)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  38. Blake, C. & Glazebrook, K. Probing dark energy using baryonic oscillations in the galaxy power spectrum as a cosmological ruler. Astrophys. J. 594, 665–673 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  39. Jenkins, A. et al. Evolution of structure in cold dark matter universes. Astrophys. J. 499, 20–40 (1998)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  40. Bardeen, J. M., Bond, J. R., Kaiser, N. & Szalay, A. S. The statistics of peaks of Gaussian random fields. Astrophys. J. 304, 15–61 (1986)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  41. Adelberger, K. L. et al. A counts-in-cells analysis of Lyman-break galaxies at redshift Z = 3. Astrophys. J. 505, 18–24 (1998)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  42. Cole, S. et al. The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Power-spectrum analysis of the final dataset and cosmological implications. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. (submitted); preprint at http://xxx.lanl.gov/astro-ph/0501174 (2005)

  43. Eisenstein, D. J. et al. Detection of the baryon acoustic peak in the large-scale correlation function of SDSS luminous red galaxies. Astrophys. J. (submitted); preprint at http://xxx.lanl.gov/astro-ph/0501171 (2005)

  44. Springel, V., Yoshida, N. & White, S. D. M. GADGET: a code for collisionless and gasdynamical cosmological simulations. N. Astron. 6, 79–117 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  45. Xu, G. A new parallel n-body gravity solver: TPM. Astrophys. J. Suppl. 98, 355–366 (1995)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  46. Barnes, J. & Hut, P. A hierarchical O(N logN) force-calculation algorithm. Nature 324, 446–449 (1986)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  47. Hockney, R. W. & Eastwood, J. W. Computer Simulation Using Particles Ch. 5 (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1981)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  48. Colless, M. et al. The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: spectra and redshifts. Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 328, 1039–1063 (2001)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  49. White, S. D. M. in Cosmology and Large-Scale Structure (eds Schaefer, R., Silk, J., Spiro, M. & Zinn-Justin, J.) Ch. 8 (Elsevier, Dordrecht, 1996)

    Google Scholar 

  50. Seljak, U. & Zaldarriaga, M. A line-of-sight integration approach to Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies. Astrophys. J. 469, 437–444 (1996)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The computations reported here were performed at the Rechenzentrum der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Garching, Germany.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 1, 85740, Garching, Germany

    Volker Springel, Simon D. M. White, Liang Gao & Darren Croton

  2. Institute for Computational Cosmology, Department of Physics, University of Durham, South Road, DH1 3LE, Durham, UK

    Adrian Jenkins, Carlos S. Frenk, John Helly & Shaun Cole

  3. Department of Physics, Nagoya University, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, 464-8602, Japan

    Naoki Yoshida

  4. Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, V8P 5C2, Canada

    Julio Navarro

  5. Department of Physics & Astronomy, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4M1, Canada

    Robert Thacker & Hugh Couchman

  6. Institute of Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Blackford Hill, EH9 3HJ, Edinburgh, UK

    John A. Peacock

  7. Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Sussex, BN1 9QH, Falmer, Brighton, UK

    Peter Thomas

  8. Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48109-1120, USA

    August Evrard

  9. Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, 3941 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15260, USA

    Jörg Colberg

  10. Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

    Frazer Pearce

Authors
  1. Volker Springel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Simon D. M. White
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Adrian Jenkins
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Carlos S. Frenk
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Naoki Yoshida
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Liang Gao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Julio Navarro
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Robert Thacker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Darren Croton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. John Helly
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. John A. Peacock
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Shaun Cole
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  13. Peter Thomas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  14. Hugh Couchman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  15. August Evrard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  16. Jörg Colberg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  17. Frazer Pearce
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Volker Springel.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

Reprints and permissions information is available at npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Methods

This details the physical model used to compute the galaxy population, and gives a short summary of the simulation method. Where appropriate, further references to relevant literature for our methodology are included. (PDF 255 kb)

Supplementary Video

This computer animation visualizes the dark matter distribution of the simulated universe at the present epoch, in a slice of thickness 15 Mpc/h. A zoom over several decades in length-scale onto one of the many rich clusters of galaxies is shown, highlighting the morphology of structure of the universe on different scales as well as the large dynamic range of the millennium simulation. (To play this high-resolution movie on Windows or Apple computers, you may have to install the `divx'-codec, available for free at www.divx.com). (AVI 11065 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Springel, V., White, S., Jenkins, A. et al. Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars. Nature 435, 629–636 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03597

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03597

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing