A high-resolution cosmological simulation of a strong gravitational lens

Understand

We present a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation of a 10^13 Msun galaxy group and its environment (out to 10 times the virial radius) carried out using the EAGLE model of galaxy formation.

• Exploiting a novel technique to increase the resolution of the dark matter calculation independently of that of the gas, the simulation resolves dark matter haloes and subhaloes of mass 5x10^6 Msun .
• It is therefore useful for studying the abundance and properties of the haloes and subhaloes targeted in strong lensing tests of the cold dark matter model.
• We estimate the halo and subhalo mass functions and discuss how they are affected both by the inclusion of baryons in the simulation and by the environment.