How did the Virgo cluster form?
Jenny G. Sorce, Stefan Gottloeber, Yehuda Hoffman, Gustavo Yepes

TL;DR
This study uses constrained cosmological simulations to investigate the formation history of the Virgo galaxy cluster, revealing a quiet accretion process over the last 7 billion years consistent with observations.
Contribution
It introduces a method to simulate the Virgo cluster's formation using galaxy peculiar velocities, providing new insights into its assembly history.
Findings
Virgo halos in simulations match observed properties within 10-20%.
Mass accretion occurred quietly over the last 7 Gyr.
Matter predominantly fell along the observed filament direction.
Abstract
While the Virgo cluster is the nearest galaxy cluster and therefore the best observed one, little is known about its formation history. In this paper, a set of cosmological simulations that resemble the Local Universe is used to shed the first light on this mystery. The initial conditions for these simulations are constrained with galaxy peculiar velocities of the second catalog of the Cosmicflows project using algorithms developed within the Constrained Local UniversE Simulation project. Boxes of 500 Mpc/h on a side are set to run a series of dark matter only constrained simulations. In each simulation, a unique dark matter halo can be reliably identified as Virgo's counterpart. The properties of these Virgo halos are in agreement at a 10-20% level with the global properties of the observed Virgo cluster. Their zero-velocity masses agree at one-sigma with the observational mass…
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