Simulating galaxy formation with the IllustrisTNG model

By A. Pillepich, Volker Springel, D. Nelson, Shy Genel, Jill P. Naiman, Rüdiger Pakmor, L. Hernquist, P. Torrey, M. Vogelsberger, R. Weinberger and 1 more. 2017

1,037 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We introduce an updated physical model to simulate the formation and evolution of galaxies in cosmological, large-scale gravity+magnetohydrodynamical simulations with the moving mesh code AREPO. The overall framework builds upon the successes of the Illustris galaxy formation model, and includes prescriptions for star formation, stellar evolution, chemical enrichment, primordial and metal-line cooling of the gas, stellar feedback with galactic outflows, and black hole formation, growth and multi-mode feedback. In this paper we give a comprehensive description of the physical and numerical advances which form the core of the IllustrisTNG (The Next Generation) framework. We focus on the revised implementation of the galactic winds, of which we modify the directionality, velocity, thermal content, and energy scalings, and explore its effects on the galaxy population. As described in earlier works, the model also includes a new black hole driven kinetic feedback at low accretion rates, magnetohydrodynamics, and improvements to the numerical scheme. Using a suite of (25 Mpc $h^{-1}$)$^3$ cosmological boxes we assess the outcome of the new model at our fiducial resolution. The presence of a self-consistently amplified magnetic field is shown to have an important impact on the stellar content of $10^{12} M_{\rm sun}$ haloes and above. Finally, we demonstrate that the new galactic winds promise to solve key problems identified in Illustris in matching observational constraints and affecting the stellar content and sizes of the low mass end of the galaxy population.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e6e6815e918949fb0092732c182bdffd093ca4b

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. L. Hernquist
2. Volker Springel
3. M. Vogelsberger
4. P. Hopkins
5. Shy Genel
6. P. Torrey
7. D. Nelson
8. F. Marinacci

In Instrumentation

1. L. Hernquist
2. Volker Springel
3. M. Vogelsberger
4. Shy Genel
5. D. Nelson
6. P. Torrey
7. F. Marinacci
8. P. Hopkins

Citations in the corpus

• The optical morphologies of galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulation: a comparison to Pan-STARRS observations (2018, methodology): “MNRAS 000, 000–000 (0000) cells above a given density threshold (nH ∼ 0.1 cm−3), which are stochastically converted into stellar particles (for details, see Springel & Hernquist 2003; Vogelsberger et al. 2013; Pillepich et al. 2018a).”
• First results from the TNG50 simulation: the evolution of stellar and gaseous discs across cosmic time (2019, methodology): “As a reminder, we do not adjust in any way our model parameters as a function of numerical resolution, but for the choices on the softening lengths (see Pillepich et al. 2018a, for a discussion).”
• The IllustrisTNG simulations: public data release (2018, methodology): “For complete details on the behavior, implementation, parameter selection, and validation of these physical models, see the two TNG methods papers: Weinberger et al. (2017) and Pillepich et al. (2018b).”
• First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the stellar mass content of groups and clusters of galaxies (2017, methodology): “11 has been already quantified in Pillepich et al. 2018 (e.g. their Fig.”
• The star formation activity of IllustrisTNG galaxies: main sequence, UVJ diagram, quenched fractions, and systematics (2018, background): “…star formation activity of galaxies produced in the state-ofthe-art cosmological magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of The Next Generation Illustris project (hereafter IllustrisTNG or TNG: Naiman et al. 2018; Marinacci et al. 2018; Springel et al. 2018; Pillepich et al. 2018b; Nelson et al. 2018a).”
• simba: Cosmological simulations with black hole growth and feedback (2019, result): “(iv) Illustris-TNG uses, at maximum, 200% of the AGN bolometric luminosity (assuming a 10% radiative efficiency), whereas for our model, the maximum is approximately a third of the bolometric luminosity.”
• The quest for dual and binary supermassive black holes: A multi-messenger view (2019, background): “Springel and Hernquist, 2002; Schaye and Dalla Vecchia, 2008), stellar evolution, supernova feedback, chemical enrichment (e.g. Tornatore et al., 2003, 2007; Pillepich et al., 2018), magnetic fields (e.”
• First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: matter and galaxy clustering (2017, methodology): “We emphasize that all model parameters of the IllustrisTNG runs have been kept exactly the same as in our default model described in Pillepich et al. (2018), and also no adjustments of these parameters are made for different numerical mass resolutions, except for the gravitational softening lengths…”