Abstract

Understanding the origin of galaxy and dark matter properties, and in particular, their angular momentum, is a crucial open problem. Studying statistical correlations in large simulated populations sheds some light, but this approach is intrinsically limited to correlations rather than causal links. In this presentation, I will present recent numerical developments that allow to uncover the causal origin of galaxy and dark matter properties. In particular, I will show that the dark matter angular momentum can be predicted from the initial conditions in the very early Universe. I will also show that half the variation in the concentration of dark matter halos can be attributed to interactions with its cosmological environment. In a second part, I will discuss early results about the causal origin of galactic properties obtained from simulations that also include baryonic physics (cooling, star formation, supernova and AGN feedback).