Substructures in hydrodynamical cluster simulations

Abstract

The abundance and structure of dark matter subhaloes have been analysed extensively in recent studies of dark-matter-only simulations, but comparatively little is known about the impact of baryonic physics on halo substructures. We here extend the subfind algorithm for substructure identification such that it can be reliably applied to dissipative hydrodynamical simulations that include star formation. This allows, in particular, the identification of galaxies as substructures in simulations of clusters of galaxies and a determination of their content of gravitationally bound stars, dark matter and hot and cold gas. Using a large set of cosmological cluster simulations, we present a detailed analysis of halo substructures in hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy clusters, focusing in particular on the influence both of radiative and non-radiative gas physics and of non-standard physics such as thermal conduction and feedback by galactic outflows. We also examine the impact of numerical nuisance parameters such as artificial viscosity parameterizations. We find that diffuse hot gas is efficiently stripped from subhaloes when they enter the highly pressurized cluster atmosphere. This has the effect of decreasing the subhalo mass function relative to a corresponding dark-matter-only simulation. These effects are mitigated in radiative runs, where baryons condense in the central subhalo regions and form compact stellar cores. However, in all cases, only a very small fraction, of the order of one per cent, of subhaloes within the cluster virial radii preserve a gravitationally bound hot gaseous atmosphere. The fraction of mass contributed by gas in subhaloes is found to increase with the cluster-centric distance. Interestingly, this trend extends well beyond the virial radii, thus showing that galaxies feel the environment of the pressurized cluster gas over fairly large distances. The compact stellar cores (i.e. galaxies) are generally more resistant against tidal disruption than pure dark matter subhaloes. Still, the fraction of star-dominated substructures within our simulated clusters is only ∼10 per cent. We expect that the finite resolution in our simulations makes the galaxies overly susceptible to tidal disruption, hence the above fraction of star-dominated galaxies should represent a lower limit for the actual fraction of galaxies surviving the disruption of their host dark matter subhalo.