Related papers: Merger trees and the multiplicity function of halo…
I review scenarios for the assembly of supermassive black holes (MBHs) at the center of galaxies that trace their hierarchical build-up far up in the dark matter halo "merger tree". Monte Carlo realizations of the merger hierarchy in a LCDM…
Cosmological N-body simulations were performed to study the evolution of the phase-space density Q = rho/sigma^3 of dark matter halos. No significant differences in the scale relations Q ~ sigma^(-2.1) or Q ~ M^(-0.82) are seen for "cold"…
On the one hand, the large scale structure of matter is arguably scale invariant, and, on the other hand, halos and voids are recognized as prominent features of that structure. To unify both approaches, we propose to model the dark matter…
The concentration parameter is a key characteristic of a dark matter halo that conveniently connects the halo's present-day structure with its assembly history. Using 'Dark Sky', a suite of cosmological $N$-body simulations, we investigate…
The cosmic web plays a major role in the formation and evolution of galaxies and defines, to a large extent, their properties. However, the relation between galaxies and environment is still not well understood. Here we present a machine…
We introduce the contour process to describe the geometrical properties of merger trees. The contour process produces a one-dimensional object, the contour walk, which is a translation of the merger tree. We portray the contour walk through…
Galaxies with Milky Way-like stellar masses have a wide range of bulge and black hole masses; in turn, these correlate with other properties such as star formation history. While many processes may drive bulge formation, major and minor…
In an earlier paper we quantified the mean merger rate of dark matter haloes as a function of redshift z, descendant halo mass M0, and progenitor halo mass ratio xi using the Millennium simulation of the LCDM cosmology. Here we broaden that…
For idealized (spherical, smooth) dark matter halos described by single-parameter density profiles (such as the NFW profile) there exists a one-to-one mapping between the energy of the halo and the scale radius of its density profile. The…
We use path integrals in order to estimate merger rates of dark matter haloes using the Extended Press-Schechter approximation (EPS) for the Spherical Collapse (SC) and the Ellipsoidal Collapse (EC) models. Merger rates have been calculated…
We model the acquisition of spin by dark-matter halos in semi-analytic merger trees. We explore two different algorithms; one in which halo spin is acquired from the orbital angular momentum of merging satellites, and another in which halo…
Two methods of constraining the properties of dark energy are weak lensing tomography and cluster counting. Uncertainties in mass calibration of clusters can be reduced by using the properties of halo clustering (the clustering of…
We study the ability of PINOCCHIO (PINpointing Orbit-Crossing Collapsed HIerarchical Objects) to predict the merging histories of dark matter (DM) haloes, comparing the PINOCCHIO predictions with the results of two large N-body simulations…
Accurate predictions of the abundance and clustering of dark matter haloes play a key role in testing the standard cosmological model. Here, we investigate the accuracy of one of the leading methods of connecting the simulated dark matter…
Although weak lensing (WL) is a powerful method to estimate a galaxy cluster mass without any dynamical assumptions, a model bias can arise when the cluster density profile departs from the assumed model profile. In a merging system, the…
We present a new theory for the hierarchical clustering of dark matter (DM) halos based on stochastic differential equations, that constitutes a change of perspective with respect to existing frameworks (e.g., the excursion set approach);…
Stellar halos are the only major stellar component of disk galaxies that lack systematic observational characterization, yet they encode critical information about galaxy merger histories. We present the first systematic census of stellar…
Predicting the merger timescale ($\tau_{\rm merge}$) of merging dark matter halos, based on their orbital parameters and the structural properties of their hosts, is a fundamental problem in gravitational dynamics that has important…
If dark matter interacts, even weakly, via non-gravitational forces, simulations predict that it will be preferentially scattered towards the trailing edge of the halo during collisions between galaxy clusters. This will temporarily create…
We analyse the spatial distribution of halo merger sites using four numerical simulations with high time resolution of structure growth in a Lambda-CDM cosmology. We find no evidence for any large-scale relative bias between mergers and…