Award Date

5-2010

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Astronomy

Department

Physics and Astronomy

First Committee Member

Kentaro Nagamine, Chair

Second Committee Member

Daniel Proga

Third Committee Member

George Rhee

Graduate Faculty Representative

Balakrishnan Naduvalath

Number of Pages

45

Abstract

The existence of a bullet cluster (such as 1E0657-56) poses a challenge to the concordance cold dark matter model. Here we investigate the velocity distribution of dark matter halo pairs in large N-body simulations with differing box sizes and resolutions. We examine various basic statistics such as halo masses, relative halo velocities, collisional angles, and separation distances in our simulations. We then compare the results to the observational properties of 1E0657-56. Our results suggest that it is very difficult to produce such a halo pair with such a high relative velocity at a redshift of z=0. The relative velocities increase at higher redshift, and we find several candidate pairs in a volume of (2 h−1Gpc)3 at the same redshift as 1E0657- 56, z=0.296. However, most of these candidate pairs are separated by too large of a distance. (Refer to PDF file for exact formulas.)

Disciplines

Astrophysics and Astronomy

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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