On Halo Assembly
Testing models that predict the collapse of halos
My current research focus is on understanding halo formation. The big question is to predict the collapse of proto-halos into gravitationally bound structures. The simplest model ignores environmental effects, and assumes spherical symmetry. The collapse of the proto-halo is then determined by an overdensity threshold. In Borzyszkowski et al. 20171, simple extensions of this model to include information from the tidal environment were explored for a small selection of halos. Their model asserts that only those proto-halos whose ellipticity is less than 0.5 will accrete mass. In this ongoing work, I'm exploring how these simple models apply to (or can be extended to) halos in a wider range of masses. This will clarify our understanding of the assembly of halos, and pave way for future work on the galaxy-halo connection.