Search for: All records

Dark matter plays a crucial role in shaping the structure and development of galaxies. Understanding how dark matter interacts with visible matter provides key insights into the fundamental processes that drive galaxy formation and evolution. The Illustris TNG-50 simulation provides detailed modeling of the formation and evolution of galaxies from shortly after the Big Bang and accounts for a wide range of physical processes that influence this formation. This offers the opportunity to investigate how galaxies and their structures evolve over time and the role of dark matter in this process. Using a two-point correlation study of baryonic matter in Milky Way-like galaxies in TNG-50, we seek to understand if two-point correlation signals change over time. More specifically, we aim to determine whether specific length scales of dark matter structures leave detectable imprints on a galaxy's stellar distribution. Additionally, we will investigate whether galaxies in TNG-50 exhibit asymmetric structures in stars and/or dark matter, and examine how these asymmetries evolve before and after major merger events. This is achieved by developing code to identify the symmetry axes of disk galaxies in TNG-50, aiming to explore whether the principal axes of dark matter and stellar distributions align or if any misalignment changes over cosmic time.