Patricia Beatriz Tissera

Chemical evolution using smooth particle hydrodynamical cosmological simulations – I. Implementation, tests and first results

We develop a model to implement metal enrichment in a cosmological context based on the hydrodynamical AP3MSPH code described by Tissera, Lambas and Abadi (1997). The star formation model is based on the Schmidt law and has been modified in order to describe the transformation of gas into stars in more detail. The enrichment of the interstellar medium due to supernovae I and II explosions is taken into account by assuming a Salpeter Initial Mass Function and different nucleosynthesis models. The different chemical elements are mixed within the gaseous medium according to the Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics technique. Gas particles can be enriched by different neighbouring particles at the same time. We present tests of the code that assess the effects of resolution and model parameters on the results. We show that the main effect of low numerical resolution is to produce a more effective mixing of elements, resulting in abundance relations with less dispersion. We have performed cosmological simulations in a standard Cold Dark Matter scenario and we present results of the analysis of the star formation and chemical properties of the interstellar medium and stellar population of the simulated galactic objects. We show that these systems reproduce abundance ratios for primary and secondary elements of the interstellar medium, and the correlation between the (O/H) abundance and the gas fraction of galaxies. We find that star formation efficiency, the relative rate of supernovae II to supernovae I and life-time of binary systems as well as the stellar nucleosynthesis

Analysis of galaxy formation with hydrodynamics

We present a hydrodynamical code based on the Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics technique implemented in an AP3M code aimed at solving the hydrodynamical and gravitational equations in a cosmological frame. We analyze the ability of the code to reproduce standard tests and perform numerical simulations to study the formation of galaxies in a typical region of a CDM model. These numerical simulations include gas and dark matter particles and take into account physical processes such as shock waves, radiative cooling, and a simplified model of star formation. Several observed properties of normal galaxies such as

Global environmental effects versus galaxy interactions

M_{gas}/M_{total}

Evolution of stellar population: Environments vs galaxy interactions

ratios, the luminosity function and the Tully-Fisher relation are analyzed within the limits imposed by numerical resolution.

Galaxy Interactions and their Role at Moderate Environments

We explore properties of close galaxy pairs and merging systems selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4 in different environments with the aim to assess the relative importance of the role of interactions over global environmental processes. For this purpose, we perform a comparative study of galaxies with and without close companions as a function of local density and host halo mass, carefully removing sources of possible biases. We find that at low- and high-local-density environments, colours and concentration indices of close galaxy pairs are very similar to those of isolated galaxies. At intermediate densities, we detect significant differences, indicating that close pairs could have experienced a more rapid transition on to the red sequence than isolated galaxies. The presence of a correlation between concentration index and colours indicates that the physical mechanism responsible for the colour transformation also operates in the transformation of the luminous matter distribution. At fixed local densities, we find a dependence of the red galaxy fraction on dark matter halo mass for galaxies with or without a close companion. This suggests the action of host halo mass related effects. Regardless of dark matter halo mass, we show that the percentage of red galaxies in close pairs and in the control sample are comparable at low- and high-local-density environments. However, at intermediate local densities, the gap in the red fraction between close pairs and the control galaxies increases from ∼10 per cent in low-mass haloes up to ∼50 per cent in the most massive ones. Interestingly, we also detect that 50 per cent of merging systems populate the intermediate local environments, with a large fraction of them being extremely red and bulge dominated. Our findings suggest that in intermediate-density environments galaxies are efficiently pre-processed by close encounters and mergers before entering higher local density regions.

An Observer's Guide to Build a Control Sample for Galaxy Pairs

Several authors have studied the dependence of galaxy properties on environment in order to understand which mechanisms operate in the galaxy evolution. Recently, some of them have proposed that intermediate densities could be sites where local environment influences the transition of galaxies onto the red-sequence, as opposed to mechanisms that operate on cluster scales. Based on the evidence that interacting and merging systems are frequent at intermediate densities, we use the SDSS-DR4 data to analyse the role of close galaxy interactions as an environmental process which could contribute to lead evolutionary transformations. We explore the properties of galaxy pairs at different local and global density environments, comparing them with those of isolate galaxies in an unbiased control sample (CS).