Hydrodynamic approach to the evolution of cosmic structures - II. Study of N-body simulations at z= 0

Abstract

We present a series of cosmological N-body simulations which make use of the hydrodynamic approach to the evolution of structures. This approach addresses explicitly the existence of a finite spatial resolution and the dynamical effect of subresolution degrees of freedom. We adapt this method to cosmological simulations of the standard Lambda cold dark matter structure formation scenario and study the effects induced at redshift z= 0 by this novel approach on the large-scale clustering patterns as well as (individual) dark matter haloes. Comparing these simulations to usual N-body simulations, we find that (i) the new (hydrodynamic) model entails a proliferation of low-mass haloes and (ii) dark matter haloes have a higher degree of rotational support. These results agree with the theoretical expectation about the qualitative behaviour of the ‘correction terms’ introduced by the hydrodynamic approach: these terms act as a drain of inflow kinetic energy and a source of vorticity by the small-scale tidal torques and shear stresses.