Radiative shocks in galaxy formation . I : Cooling of a primordial plasma with no sources of heating

We use a 1-D Lagrangian code which follows both a gaseous and a dark component to study the radiative shocks that appear in the evolution of spherical scale-free perturbations in an Einstein-de Sitter Universe. The detailed behaviour of the shock depends on whether the radiative cooling is dominated by bremsstrahlung or line cooling. Bremsstrahlung is the main energy loss mechanism for systems with circular velocity V c > 100 km s −1. In this case, we can reproduce the kinematics of the shock and of the cooling wave to a high degree of accuracy with a simple analytic model. When line cooling dominates, the shock front can be unstable to oscillations. The period and amplitude of the oscillations increase in time as the universe expands. For such systems, our analytic model provides only a rough estimate of the mean evolution. We believe that now we fully understand the effect radiative cooling has in the shocks that appear in spherical models for galaxy formation.