Open AccessThe alignment of clusters using large‐scale simulations
Author(s) -
Onuora Lesley I.,
Thomas Peter A.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-8711.2000.03910.x
Subject(s) - physics , supercluster (genetic) , cosmology , dark matter , astrophysics , scale (ratio) , galaxy cluster , galaxy , statistical physics , quantum mechanics , biology , biochemistry , phylogenetics , gene
The alignment of clusters of galaxies with their nearest neighbours and between clusters within a supercluster is investigated using simulations of 512 3 dark matter particles for ΛCDM and τ CDM cosmological models. Strongly significant alignments are found for separations of up to 15 h −1 Mpc in both cosmologies, but for the ΛCDM model the alignments extend up to separations of 30 h −1 Mpc. The effect is strongest for nearest neighbours, but is not significant enough to be useful as an observational discriminant between cosmologies. As a check of whether this difference in alignments is present in other cosmologies, smaller simulations with 256 3 particles are investigated for four different cosmological models. Because of poor number statistics, only the standard CDM model shows indications of having different alignments from the other models.