Simulating the chemical enrichment of the intra-group medium
| dc.contributor.author | Padawer-Blatt, Aviv | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Babul, Arif | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-04-22T21:16:15Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-04-22T21:16:15Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Physics and Astronomy | |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Science MSc | |
| dc.description.abstract | The channels by which heavy elements are produced through nucleosynthesis in stars, ejected from stars into the surrounding interstellar medium (ISM) of host galaxies, and dispersed (both spatially and in thermodynamic phase, i.e. density, temperature, and velocity) into their gaseous atmospheres are fundamental to the formation and evolution of galaxies, as well as gravitationally bound collections of galaxies - groups and clusters. These massive systems host hot diffuse gas throughout their volume, known as the intragroup medium (IGrM), which can become substantially enriched with metals, informing us about stellar populations, chemical production and enrichment mechanisms, large-scale gas flows, and gas- and metal-mixing. This thesis investigates the chemical enrichment of the IGrM using cosmological simulations. Specifically, I compare results from the simba and simba-c simulations, focusing on the distribution of metal abundances in galaxy groups. simba-c incorporates an updated and more realistic chemical enrichment and stellar feedback model (Chem5), leading to notable differences in IGrM abundances compared to simba. I examine projected emission-weighted abundance profiles, finding that Simba-c generally produces lower-amplitude abundance profiles with flatter cores, aligning better with observational data across a range of X-ray relevant metals. However, the agreement between simulations and observations for both Simba-c and Simba worsens with decreasing group mass through an increase in the amplitudes of the simulated abundance profiles relative to those of the observed profiles; this agreement is also somewhat sensitive to the specific element under consideration. Moreover, I investigate the 3D mass-weighted abundance profiles to deepen my understanding of the physical mechanisms driving the changes found between Simba and Simba-c and between low and high mass groups. The results indicate that Simba-c enriches the IGrM to a lesser degree than Simba across all studied metals and mass scales, and produces less total metal mass in the hot diffuse phase. I ascribe these features to reduced metal yields in Chem5 compared to Simba and the replacement of Simba’s instantaneous enrichment model with Chem5 in Simba-c. On the other hand, Simba-c actually contains more total hot gas mass in low mass groups than does Simba, which may be due to slight changes in the stellar and AGN feedback models. My study reveals that accurate sub-grid models for chemical enrichment, as well as metal dispersal and mixing processes, are required to realistically reproduce observed group environments in cosmological simulations. | |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | |
| dc.identifier.bibliographicCitation | Padawer-Blatt, A.; Shao, Z.; Hough, R.T.; Rennehan, D.; Barré, R.; Saeedzadeh, V.; Babul, A.; Davé, R.; Kobayashi, C.; Cui, W.; et al. Core to Cosmic Edge: SIMBA-C’s New Take on Abundance Profiles in the Intragroup Medium at z = 0. Universe 2025, 11, 47. https://doi.org/10.3390/universe11020047 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/21958 | |
| dc.language | English | eng |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | |
| dc.subject | Galaxy groups | |
| dc.subject | Intragroup medium | |
| dc.subject | Chemical abundances | |
| dc.subject | Metallicity | |
| dc.subject | Chemical enrichment | |
| dc.subject | Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations | |
| dc.subject | X-ray observations | |
| dc.title | Simulating the chemical enrichment of the intra-group medium | |
| dc.type | Thesis |