# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

It is impossible at present numerically to model all the physical processes which are involved in galaxy formation. Galaxies, as we see them, are made of baryonic material, and at very least a gaseous component must be included in any modelling. In the hierarchical galaxy formation scenario  dissipation by the baryons is also crucial for galaxies to form. However it is not clear that simply including cooling of the gas is a sensible approach numerically as this would appear to lead to catastrophic cooling in the early universe. The continual merging of dark halos leads to some shock reheating of cold gas but it is not obvious that the cooling catastrophy can be averted without help from some other heating mechanism . The most likely heat source is that from star forming regions, particularly supernovae explosions. It seems a reasonable assumption that the energy injected back into the gas from supernovae can act as a negative feedback mechanism and lead to some kind of self-regulation of star formation. This self-regulation is expected to be at its most effective in the early universe when the characteristic depth of the dark matter potential wells was much lower than today.

For our simulations we rely on an effect of numerical resolution to mimic these feedback processes. The finite mass resolution in the simulation suppresses cooling in low mass halos and delays the onset of the formation of the cold dense gas phase (defined at $`T<10^4K`$, and $`\mathrm{60\hspace{0.33em}000}`$ times the mean gas density) which we identify as galaxies. We do not include star formation in the simulation, but assume that all the cold dense gas in the simulations should really be in the form of stars. The resolution is determined by the gas particle mass. We selected a gas particle mass such that the amount of gas in the cold dense phase at $`z=0`$ in the SCDM model provides a reasonable match to the observed stellar mass density in the local universe.

With this choice of gas particle mass, which equates to $`2\times 10^9M_{sun}`$, we are able to simulate a 100 Mpc cubed shaped region with $`128^3`$ particles of both gas and dark matter. This volume is large enough to study clustering statistics on scales up to 10 Mpc with a sample of about 2000 galaxies.

The simulations are started from a redshift of 50. The models we have simulated are a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_0=0.7`$, $`\sigma _8=0.9`$, $`h=0.7`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b=0.03`$ and an SCDM model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$, $`\sigma _8=0.6`$, $`h=0.5`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b=0.06`$. The power spectra are the same as used for the models in  except that we used a higher value of $`\sigma _8`$ for SCDM.

## 2 The clustering of galaxies

The galaxies in the simulation are identified using a friends-of-friends group finder. The object catalog returned by the group finder is relatively insensitive to the linking length. We chose a linking-length of 1/50 of the mean physical interparticle separation at $`z=0`$.

Figure 1 shows the two-point correlation functions for the simulated galaxies (filled circles), and dark matter (solid line) in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. The observed galaxy correlation function  is shown as dashed and dotted lines. The latter is from . On large scales the galaxies and mass have essentially the same correlation function. But on scales around $`1Mpc/h`$ the galaxy distribution is anti-biased with respect to the mass. The match to the observed galaxy correlation function is pretty good - in particular the simulated galaxy correlation function is close to a power law unlike the mass correlation function. A power law galaxy correlation function is also seen in the SCDM simulation.

Figure 2 shows the two-point correlation function of the galaxies in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model at a range of epochs. The amplitude of the correlation function has changed remarkably little from the present back until redshift of 3 even though the mass correlation function evolves linearly by a factor 10. At redshift 5 the galaxy clustering strength is significantly greater than at the present.

Figure 3 shows the line-of-sight pairwise velocity dispersion (explained in ) of the galaxies in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model compared to the dark matter, and a determination from the LCRS redshift survey . The galaxies have a smaller dispersion than the dark matter, something which is clearly necessary for the viability of this cosmological model. We have found that if one selects the nearest dark matter particle to each galaxy, then the pairwise dispersion of these particles is essentially the same as the galaxies.

## 3 Summary

The clustering of the galaxies in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM simulation is surprisingly close to the observed galaxy correlation function. Significantly in both $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM and SCDM runs the galaxy correlation function is much closer to a power law than the mass correlation function. There is little evolution in the galaxy correlation function between redshift 3 and the present. For the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model the pairwise galaxy velocity dispersion is much lower than that of the dark matter. A similar effect is seen in the pairwise dispersions of galaxies in the SCDM model, but weaker.

Acknowledgements.  The simulations described here were run at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre by the Virgo Consortium. CSF acknowledges a PPARC Senior Fellowship.