Self-similar shocked accretion of collisional gas with radiative cooling

We describe similarity solutions that characterize the collapse of collisional gas on to scale-free perturbations in an Einstein-de Sitter universe. We consider the effects of radiative cooling and derive self-similar solutions under the assumption that the cooling function is a power law of density and temperature, Lambda(T, rho) proportional to rho(3/2)T. We use these results to test the ability of smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) techniques to follow the collapse and accretion of shocked, rapidly cooling gas in a cosmological context. Our SPH code reproduces the analytical results very well in cases that include or exclude radiative cooling. No substantial deviations from the predicted central mass accretion rates or from the temperature, density and velocity profiles are observed in well-resolved regions inside the shock radius. This test problem lends support to the reliability of SPH techniques to model the complex process of galaxy formation.