The cores of galaxy clusters contain the most massive galaxies in the Universe, the
brightest cluster galaxies. These galaxies are unique compared to their counterpart
galaxies outside of clusters as they have much brighter cores, and vast spatially-
extended stellar envelopes. The theoretical picture of how they reached their huge
masses relied on the idea of gradual stellar mass growth during the second half of the
history of the Universe. However, recent observational evidence of highly-overdense
protoclusters, the progenitors of these galaxies, demonstrates that some brightest
cluster galaxies may have assembled within the first few billion years after the Big
Bang – seemingly contradicting our theoretical predictions. I include my theoretical
work that shows the short timescales over which these observed protoclusters trans-
form into the brightest cluster galaxies and discuss the likelihood of finding these rare
protoclusters in the early Universe.
To push our understanding of the rapid evolution of these galaxies even further for-
ward demands the use of numerical simulations due to the highly coupled, non-linear
astrophysical processes that occur during the process. In this dissertation, I include
improvements to our numerical models of hydrodynamical turbulence and supermas-
sive black holes that I incorporated into a state-of-the-art hydrodynamical+gravity
simulation code, in effort to provide the groundwork to improving our understanding
of the build-up of the brightest cluster galaxies in the early Universe, and galaxy
evolution in general. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/13859 |
| Date | 19 April 2022 |
| Creators | Rennehan, Douglas |
| Contributors | Babul, Arif |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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