The assembly of galaxies in a hierarchically clustering universe

Abstract

We study the formation of galaxies by using $N$-body/hydrodynamics simulations to investigate how baryons collect at the centre of dark matter halos. We treat the dark matter as a collisionless fluid and the baryons as an ideal gas. We include the effects of gravity, pressure gradients, hydrodynamical shocks, and radiative energy losses, but we neglect star formation. Our initial conditions assume a flat universe dominated by cold dark matter with a mean baryon abundance of 10\% by mass. Typical halos form through the merging of a few smaller systems which had themselves formed in a similar manner at higher redshift. The gas collects at the bottom of dark matter potential wells as soon as these are properly resolved by our simulations. There it settles into cold, tightly bound disks, and it remains cold during subsequent evolution. As their halos coalesce, these disks merge on a timescale that is consistent with dynamical friction estimates based on their {\it total} (gas + surrounding dark matter) mass. Both the merger rates of the disks and their mass spectrum are in remarkably good agreement with recent analytic models that describe the evolution of {\it dark halos} in a hierarchical universe. This very simple model of galaxy formation suffers from serious shortcomings. It predicts that most baryons should be locked up in galaxies, whereas in the real universe most baryons are thought to lie outside visible galaxies. In addition, it predicts the specific angular momentum of a disk to be only about 20\% that of its surrounding halo, corresponding to a radius smaller than that of observed spiral galaxy disks.