FIRE-2 simulations: physics versus numerics in galaxy formation

By P. Hopkins, Andrew Wetzel, D. Keres̆, C. Faucher-Giguére, E. Quataert, M. Boylan-Kolchin, N. Murray, C. Hayward, S. Garrison-Kimmel, Cameron Hummels and 18 more. Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2017

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The Feedback In Realistic Environments (FIRE) project explores feedback in cosmological galaxy formation simulations. Previous FIRE simulations used an identical source code (“FIRE-1”) for consistency. Motivated by the development of more accurate numerics – including hydrodynamic solvers, gravitational softening, and supernova coupling algorithms – and exploration of new physics (e.g. magnetic fields), we introduce “FIRE-2”, an updated numerical implementation of FIRE physics for the GIZMO code. We run a suite of simulations and compare against FIRE-1: overall, FIRE-2 improvements do not qualitatively change galaxy-scale properties. We pursue an extensive study of numerics versus physics. Details of the star-formation algorithm, cooling physics, and chemistry have weak effects, provided that we include metal-line cooling and star formation occurs at higher-than-mean densities. We present new resolution criteria for high-resolution galaxy simulations. Most galaxy-scale properties are robust to numerics we test, provided: (1) Toomre masses are resolved; (2) feedback coupling ensures conservation, and (3) individual supernovae are time-resolved. Stellar masses and profiles are most robust to resolution, followed by metal abundances and morphologies, followed by properties of winds and circum-galactic media (CGM). Central (∼kpc) mass concentrations in massive (>L*) galaxies are sensitive to numerics (via trapping/recycling of winds in hot halos). Multiple feedback mechanisms play key roles: supernovae regulate stellar masses/winds; stellar mass-loss fuels late star formation; radiative feedback suppresses accretion onto dwarfs and instantaneous star formation in disks. We provide all initial conditions and numerical algorithms used.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4364af31229f7e9a3d83a289a928b2f2a43d30cb

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Citations in the corpus

A Nearby Repeating Fast Radio Burst in the Direction of M81 (2021, methodology): “The FIRE simulation is well suited to study the CGM of simulated galaxies with high resolution and also takes into account the effect of gas inflow and outflow, along with other factors that play important roles in the evolution of galaxies (Hopkins et al. 2014, 2018).”
The lifecycle of molecular clouds in nearby star-forming disc galaxies (2019, background): “Recent simulations of galaxy formation and evolution are now able to resolve the scales of GMCs (e.g. Grand et al. 2017; Hopkins et al. 2018), but observations have long been unable to match this step outside a small number of very nearby galaxies, mostly confined to the Local Group (e.g. Bolatto…”
simba: Cosmological simulations with black hole growth and feedback (2019, methodology): “…outflows, the kinetic mass outflow rate is taken directly from very high-resolution simulations from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE; Hopkins et al. 2014, 2018; Muratov et al. 2015) simulations, providing a synergy between ISM-resolving simulations of individual galaxies and…”
Predicting the LISA white dwarf binary population in the Milky Way with cosmological simulations (2019, background): “The simulations include subgrid-scale numerical turbulent metal diffusion terms (Hopkins et al. 2018; Bonaca et al. 2017), which have almost no dynamical effect at the galaxy mass scales considered here (Su et al. 2017), but produce better agreement with the internal metallicity distribution…”
On the stunning abundance of super-early, luminous galaxies revealed by JWST (2022, background): “…approaches, ranging from numerical simulations (e.g. Vogelsberger et al. 2014; Schaye et al. 2015; Rosdahl et al. 2018; Pillepich et al. 2018; Hopkins et al. 2018; Davé et al. 2019; Trebitsch et al. 2021; Pallottini et al. 2022) to semi-analytic models (e.g. Dayal et al. 2014; Somerville &…”
Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies in Enzo (FOGGIE). I. Resolving Simulated Circumgalactic Absorption at 2 ≤ z ≤ 2.5 (2018, methodology): “In the standard-resolution simulation, we find that most of the absorbing clouds have masses of 104 M , consistent with the masses of resolution elements in FIRE (Hopkins et al. 2014, 2018), Illustris (Vogelsberger et al. 2014), or EAGLE (Schaye et al. 2015).”
The biggest splash (2019, methodology): “The subgrid physics model, FIRE-2 (Feedback In Realistic Environments, Hopkins et al. 2018), implements radiative heating and cooling including metal-line cooling tracking 11 elements, a spatially uniform UV background and a set of stellar feedback processes.”
The Local Group on FIRE: dwarf galaxy populations across a suite of hydrodynamic simulations (2018, methodology): “2 SI M U L AT I O N S We analyse hydrodynamic, cosmological zoom-in (Katz & White 1993; Oñorbe et al. 2014) simulations, initialized with MUSIC (Hahn & Abel 2011), from the FIRE project (Hopkins et al. 2014), run using the improved ‘FIRE-2’ version of the code from Hopkins et al. (2018).”
Cool outflows in galaxies and their implications (2020, background): “A convenient expression that combines both single- and multiple-scattering processes is (Hopkins et al. 2014, 2018a) ṗrad = τ̃Lbol/c where τ̃ = (1 − e−τsingle )(1 + τeff,IR).”