Dissecting Cosmological Filaments at High Redshifts: Emergence of Spaghetti-type Flow Inside DM Haloes

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution simulations to analyze the complex, multiphase gas accretion through filaments into high-redshift galaxies, revealing a spaghetti-like flow pattern and the impact of outflows on the circumgalactic medium.

Contribution

It provides detailed insights into the thermodynamic and kinematic properties of cosmological filaments and their evolution at high redshifts, highlighting the emergence of spaghetti-type flows.

Findings

Filaments show a complex, multiphase structure with a core and envelope.

Accretion rates and velocities decrease with redshift.

Kelvin-Helmholtz instability develops within filaments, inducing turbulence.

Abstract

We use high-resolution zoom-in simulations to study the fueling of the central galaxies by gas accretion from cosmological filaments at high redshifts, z>=2. Their parent haloes with similar DM masses of log(M_vir/M})~11.65, have been chosen at z=6, 4, and 2, in high/low overdensity environments, with the goal of comparing evolution within similar M at different z, under dual action of cosmological accretion and galactic outflows -- forming the circumgalactic medium (CGM). We focus on the filamentary and diffuse gas accretion within few virial radii, R_vir, down to the central galaxy. Using a hybrid d-web/entropy method we have mapped the gaseous filaments, and invoking particle kinematics allowed us to separate inflows from outflows, thus resolving thermodynamic and kinematic signatures of the CGM. We find that (1) The CGM is multiphase and not in thermodynamic or dynamic equilibrium; (2) accretion rates via individual filaments display a lower accretion rate and densities at lower redshifts. The inflow velocities along the filaments decrease with redshift, z~ 6-2, from 200-30 kms^-1 by a factor of 2; (3) Temperature within the filaments increases inside R_vir, faster at lower redshifts, in tandem with decrease in the accretion rate; (4) The filaments show a complex structure along their spines: a core radial flow surrounded by a lower density envelope. The core exhibits an elevated density and lower temperature, with no obvious metallicity gradient in the filament cross sections. It also tends to separate the filament into different infall velocity regions and density cores, thus producing a spaghetti-type flow; (6) Inside the inner ~ 30\,h^-1 kpc, the filaments develop the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability which ablates and dissolves them, and triggers turbulence along the filament spine; (7) Finally, the galactic outflows affect mostly the inner ~ 0.5R_vir~ 100 h^-1 kpc of the CGM.