Galaxies and gas in a cold dark matter universe

Abstract

We use a combined gravity/hydrodynamics code to simulate the formation of structure in a random 22 Mpc cube of a cold dark matter universe. Adiabatic compression and shocks heat much of the gas to temperatures of 10^6^-10^7^ K, but a fraction of the gas cools radiatively to about 10^4^ K and condenses into discrete, highly overdense lumps. We identify these lumps with galaxies. The high-mass end of their baryonic mass function fits the form of the observed galaxy luminosity function. They retain independent identities after their dark halos merge, so gravitational clustering produces groups of galaxies embedded in relatively smooth envelopes of hot gas and dark matter. The galaxy correlation function is approximately an r^-2.1^ power law from separations of 35 kpc to 7 Mpc. Galaxy fluctuations are biased relative to dark matter fluctuations by a factor b~ 1.5. We find no significant "velocity bias" between galaxies and dark matter particles. However, virial analysis of the simulation's richest group leads to an estimated {OMEGA}~0.3, even though the simulation adopts {OMEGA} = 1.