NIHAO project – I. Reproducing the inefficiency of galaxy formation across cosmic time with a large sample of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations

By Liang-Yao Wang, A. Dutton, G. Stinson, A. Macciò, Camilla Penzo, X. Kang, B. Keller, James Wadsley. 2015

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We introduce project NIHAO (Numerical Investigation of a Hundred Astrophysical Objects), a set of 100 cosmological zoom-in hydrodynamical simulations performed using the GASOLINE code, with an improved implementation of the SPH algorithm. The haloes in our study range from dwarf (M-200 similar to 5 x 10(9) M-circle dot) to Milky Way (M-200 similar to 2 x 10(12) M-circle dot) masses, and represent an unbiased sampling of merger histories, concentrations and spin parameters. The particle masses and force softenings are chosen to resolve the mass profile to below 1 per cent of the virial radius at all masses, ensuring that galaxy half-light radii are well resolved. Using the same treatment of star formation and stellar feedback for every object, the simulated galaxies reproduce the observed inefficiency of galaxy formation across cosmic time as expressed through the stellar mass versus halo mass relation, and the star formation rate versus stellar mass relation. We thus conclude that stellar feedback is the chief piece of physics required to limit the efficiency of star formation in galaxies less massive than the Milky Way.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/30b7a477712ab9bc70bd999467f9d569710cb973

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Citations in the corpus

NIHAO – IV: core creation and destruction in dark matter density profiles across cosmic time (2015, methodology): “In this study we use simulations from the NIHAO suite (Wang et al. 2015), based on an updated version of the MaGICC project (Stinson et al. 2012).”
First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the stellar mass content of groups and clusters of galaxies (2017, background): “…focused on individual haloes up to Milky-Way sized mass (e.g. Guedes et al. 2011; Stinson et al. 2013; Marinacci et al. 2014; Hopkins et al. 2014; Wang et al. 2015; Christensen et al. 2016; Grand et al. 2017; Agertz & Kravtsov 2016; Hopkins et al. 2017) or on large cosmological volumes about…”
FIRE in the field: Simulating the threshold of galaxy formation (2016, background): “Most modern high-resolution simulation suites are designed to cover a wide range of halo masses (Munshi et al. 2013; Chan et al. 2015; Wang et al. 2015; Sawala et al. 2016).”
Simulating galaxy formation with the IllustrisTNG model (2017, background): “Together with simulations of individual galaxies at even higher resolutions (e.g. Guedes et al. 2011; Stinson et al. 2013; Hopkins et al. 2014; Wang et al. 2015; Grand et al. 2017; Agertz & Kravtsov 2016; Wetzel et al. 2016), these calculations have provided new insights into the processes…”
The IllustrisTNG simulations: public data release (2018, background): “In addition, ‘zoom’ simulation campaigns include NIHAO (Wang et al. 2015), FIRE-2 (Hopkins et al. 2018), and Auriga (Grand et al. 2017), in addition to many others.”
First results from the TNG50 simulation: galactic outflows driven by supernovae and black hole feedback (2019, background): “…investigated with ‘zoom’ simulations of individual galaxies (Hopkins et al. 2014), with project campaigns of order 10 to 100 galaxies in total (Wang et al. 2015), often oriented around a focus such as Milky Way mass halos (Grand et al. 2017), Local Group analogs (Sawala et al. 2016) or the…”
NIHAO - XI. Formation of ultra-diffuse galaxies by outflows (2016, methodology): “The simulated galaxies are taken from the Numerical Investigation of a Hundred Astrophysical Objects (NIHAO) project (Wang et al. 2015), evolved using the SPH code Gasoline (Wadsley et al. 2004; Keller et al. 2014).”
The Auriga Project: the properties and formation mechanisms of disc galaxies across cosmic time (2016, background): “…curves for galaxy discs in haloes in the virial mass range 1–2 × 1012 M (see for example, Stinson et al. 2010; Mollitor, Nezri & Teyssier 2015; Wang et al. 2015), although a variety of recent models have achieved some success (Aumer et al. 2013; Stinson et al. 2013a; Marinacci et al.…”
Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, background): “The models have been extended, in a simplified way, by taking into account the additional energy release from massive stars before they explode as supernova (Kannan et al. 2014, Stinson et al. 2013, Wang et al. 2015).”