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Session 52 - Simulations of Clusters of Galaxies.
Display session, Tuesday, January 16
North Banquet Hall, Convention Center
The results of an investigation into the history of the infall of mass and small groups into cluster regions of hierarchical models of structure formation will be presented. Such results impact on the expected degree and frequency of substructure in clusters at the present epoch as a potentially strong model constraint. By utilizing the high-resolution features of the Hierarchical Particle-Mesh (HPM) N-body code written by J. V. Villumsen, the formation of clusters from z\sim 30 to z\sim 0 will be simulated in a self-consistent manner. The HPM simulation allows small simulations to be nested self-consistently within a larger simulation, resulting in a ``power zoom'' effect: smaller and smaller regions of the simulation can be examined at higher and higher degrees of resolution. The HPM code obviates the need for ``constrained initial conditions'' in which a cluster-scale fluctuation is excised from a ``fair sample'' of the model universe and allowed to evolve \underbarin isolation from the rest of the model universe. By nesting small simulations inside larger simulations, the HPM code allows an investigation into the entire infall history of clusters in a self-consistent manner, including the effect of potential fluctuations outside the actual cluster region, but nearby in the simulation.
