Resolving the Formation of Protogalaxies. I. Virialization

Understand

(Abridged) Galaxies form in hierarchically assembling dark matter halos.

• With cosmological three dimensional adaptive mesh refinement simulations, we explore in detail the virialization of baryons in the concordance cosmology, including optically thin primordial gas cooling.
• We focus on early protogalaxies with virial temperatures of 10^4 K and their progenitors.
• Without cooling, virial heating occurs in shocks close to the virial radius for material falling in from voids.