The BHCOSMO: Simulating black hole and
galaxy formation along cosmic time
Introduction:
The BHCosmo run includes a
quater of a billion particles to trace the evolution of the dark and
visible matter
distribution in a cubic region of the universe over 100 million light
years. The simulation was run on 2000 CPUs
at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
(PSC).
For
the First Time Black Hole growth and associated feedback is included in
a Large-Scale
Cosmological Simulations.
The
simulations self-consistently computes gravity exerted
by dark matter, the unseen material that comprises ninety percent of
the
universe and the forces
associated with various cosmic phenomena, including cooling gas,
growing black holes, and exploding stars.
Pictures of the matter and black hole distribution:
The projected gas density distribution and the black holes (shown as
yellow circles) in a slice of the simulation box at
seven different redshifts. Top left, the universe is 300,000 million
years old, the first black holes emerge. As the universe
evolves (from top left to bottom right) supermassive black holes and
large galaxies form at the intersection of large
scale matter filaments. The bottom, righ-hand panel shows
the gas distribution at z=1, without the black holes.
Movies of the Simulation
A 3D visualization of the galaxies, which host the supermassive black
holes, in the BHCosmo run.
The movie shows a journey
through the stellar, visible matter in the simulated
universe. We fly toward
the most massive galaxy in the simulation, at the
center of which the
most massive black hole resides (not explicitly shown in this movie).
2. Spiraling around the
BH host galaxy
The gas and stellar distribution, illustrating the dynamic
range of
the BHCosmo simulation
The following images show the projected gas density field and the black
holes at z=3.
Below are overlaid panels zooming in by a factor of 4, enalarging
the region indicated by the white square above.
Yardsticks are indicated in each panel.
Gas
Stars
References:
1. Tiziana
Di Matteo, Joerg
Colberg , Volker
Springel , Lars
Hernquist, Debora
Sijacki
Direct cosmological simulations of the
growth of black holes and galaxies, 2008, ApJ,
676, p.33
2.
Debora
Sijacki, Volker
Springel, Tiziana
Di Matteo , Lars
Hernquist
A unified model for AGN feedback in
cosmological simulations of structure formation, 2007, MNRAS,
380, p.877