Related papers: A cosmological context for compact massive galaxie…
It is a clear unique prediction of the cold dark matter paradigm of cosmological structure formation that galaxies form hierarchically and are embedded in massive, extended dark halos teeming with self-bound substructure or "subhalos". The…
Under the $\Lambda$ cold dark matter ($\Lambda$CDM) cosmological models, massive galaxies are expected to be larger in denser environments through frequent hierarchical mergers with other galaxies. Yet, observational studies of low-redshift…
Investigating the assembly history of the most massive and passive galaxies will enhance our understanding of why galaxies exhibit such a remarkable diversity in structure and morphology. In this paper, we simultaneously investigate the…
Many recent observational and theoretical studies suggest that globular clusters (GCs) host compact object populations large enough to play dominant roles in their overall dynamical evolution. Yet direct detection, particularly of black…
(Abridged) Fossil systems are group- or cluster-sized objects whose luminosity is dominated by a very massive central galaxy. In the current cold dark matter scenario, these objects formed hierarchically at an early epoch of the Universe…
We investigate the internal structure of clusters of galaxies in high-resolution N-body simulations of 4 different cosmologies. There is a higher proportion of disordered clusters in critical-density than in low-density universes, although…
The dark energy plus cold dark matter ($\Lambda$CDM) cosmological model has been a demonstrably successful framework for predicting and explaining the large-scale structure of Universe and its evolution with time. Yet on length scales…
The distribution of mass on galaxy cluster scales is an important test of structure formation scenarios, providing constraints on the nature of dark matter itself. Several techniques have been used to probe the mass distributions of…
We use publicly available galaxy merger trees, obtained applying semi-analytic techniques to a large high resolution cosmological simulation, to study the environmental history of group and cluster galaxies. Our results highlight the…
We examine gravitational lensing constraints on the structure of galaxy clusters and compare them with the results of cosmological N-body simulations of cluster formation in cold dark matter (CDM) dominated universes. We find that cluster…
The majority of bright distant quasars $(z {}^{>}_{\sim} 1)$ may form in massive mergers appearing in compact galaxy groups in/and young clusters. The expected tests are (i) large correlation signal for medium-$z$ QSOs $(1 < z < 2)$ and…
The strong lensing events that are observed in compact clusters of galaxies can, both statistically and individually, return important clues about the structural properties of the most massive structures in the Universe. Substantial work is…
Observational investigations of the abundance of massive precursors of local galaxy clusters ("proto-clusters") allow us to test the growth of density perturbations, to constrain cosmological parameters that control it, to test the theory…
We study the formation of over 6000 compact groups (CGs) of galaxies identified in mock redshift-space galaxy catalogues built from semi-analytical models of galaxy formation (SAMs) run on the Millennium Simulations. We select CGs of 4…
We examine the properties of galaxies in compact groups identified in a mock galaxy catalogue based upon the Millennium Run simulation. The overall properties of groups identified in projection are in general agreement with the best…
Fossil groups are expected to be the final product of galaxy merging within galaxy groups. In simulations, they are predicted to assemble their mass at high redshift. This early formation allows for the innermost $M^\ast$ galaxies to merge…
We study the luminosity gap, dm12, between the first and second ranked galaxies in a sample of 59 massive galaxy clusters, using data from the Hale Telescope, HST, Chandra, and Spitzer. We find that the dm12 distribution, p(dm12), is a…
High-redshift galaxy clusters allow us to examine galaxy formation in extreme environments. Here we compile data for 15 $z>1$ galaxy clusters to test the predictions from a state-of-the-art semi-analytical model of galaxy formation. The…
According to the standard model of cosmology the visible, baryonic matter of galaxies is embedded in dark matter haloes, thus extending the mass and the size of galaxies by one to two orders of magnitude. Taking into account dynamical…
We explore a scenario where metal poor globular clusters (GCs) form at the centres of their own dark matter halos in the early universe before reionization. This hypothesis leads to predictions about the abundance, distribution and…