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Predicted future fate of COSMOS galaxy protoclusters over 11 Gyr with constrained simulations

Abstract

Cosmological simulations are crucial tools in studying the Universe, but they typically do not directly match real observed structures. Constrained cosmological simulations, on the other hand, are designed to match the observed distribution of galaxies. Here we present constrained simulations based on spectroscopic surveys at a redshift of z ≈ 2.3, corresponding to an epoch of nearly 11 Gyr ago. This allows us to ‘fast-forward’ the simulation to our present day and study the evolution of observed cosmic structures self-consistently. We confirm that several previously reported protoclusters will evolve into massive galaxy clusters by our present epoch, including the ‘Hyperion’ structure that we predict will collapse into a giant filamentary supercluster spanning 100 Mpc. We also discover previously unknown protoclusters with lower final masses than are typically detectable by other methods that nearly double the number of known protoclusters within this volume. Constrained simulations, applied to future high-redshift datasets, represent a unique opportunity for studying early structure formation and matching galaxy properties between high and low redshifts.

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Data availability

The data products generated for this study are available at https://zenodo.org/record/6425013.

Code availability

Analysis codes used for this study are available at https://github.com/gmetin/COSTCO.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank P. Behroozi and D. Potter for their support with Rockstar and PKDGRAV3, respectively. M.A. thanks T. Nishimichi, M. Takada and V. Vardanyan for useful discussions. M.A. was supported by JSPS Kakenhi Grant JP21K13911. K.-G.L. acknowledges support from JSPS Kakenhi Grants JP18H05868 and JP19K14755. C.D.V. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICIU/FEDER) through research grants PGC2018-094975-C22 and RYC-2015-18078. This research is based on observations undertaken at the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope under Large Program 175.A-0839 and has been supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Some of the material presented in this paper is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1908422. This work was made possible by the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan.

Author information

Authors

Contributions

M.A. calculated the selection functions, initial conditions, simulations and halo catalogues and conducted the full analysis. M.A. and K.-G.L. conceptualized the analysis and wrote the paper. C.D.V. helped perform the simulations. F.-S.K. provided expertise about density field reconstructions. O.C., B.C.L. and D.K. provided the (partly) proprietary data and relevant literature. T.M. provided the visualizations. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Metin Ata.

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Nature Astronomy thanks Jorge Zavala and Miguel Aragón-Calvo for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–5.

Supplementary Video 1

Summarizing video of the simulations, including two zoom-ins. Music credit: REDproductions/Pixabay.

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Ata, M., Lee, KG., Vecchia, C.D. et al. Predicted future fate of COSMOS galaxy protoclusters over 11 Gyr with constrained simulations. Nat Astron 6, 857–865 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01693-0

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• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01693-0