The Romulus cosmological simulations: a physical approach to the formation, dynamics and accretion models of SMBHs

By M. Tremmel, Michael D. Karcher, Fabio Governato, M. Volonteri, Thomas R. Quinn, Andrew Pontzen, Lauren Anderson, J. Bellovary. 2016

195 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a novel implementation of supermassive black hole (SMBH) formation, dynamics and accretion in the massively parallel tree+SPH code, CHANGA. This approach improves the modelling of SMBHs in fully cosmological simulations, allowing for a more detailed analysis of SMBH-galaxy co-evolution throughout cosmic time. Our scheme includes novel, physically motivated models for SMBH formation, dynamics and sinking timescales within galaxies and SMBH accretion of rotationally supported gas. The sub-grid parameters that regulate star formation (SF) and feedback from SMBHs and SNe are optimized against a comprehensive set of z = 0 galaxy scaling relations using a novel, multidimensional parameter search. We have incorporated our new SMBH implementation and parameter optimization into a new set of high-resolution, large-scale cosmological simulations called ROMULUS. We present initial results from our flagship simulation, ROMULUS25, showing that our SMBH model results in SF efficiency, SMBH masses and global SF and SMBH accretion histories at high redshift that are consistent with observations. We discuss the importance of SMBH physics in shaping the evolution of massive galaxies and show how SMBH feedback is much more effective at regulating SF compared to SNe feedback in this regime. Further, we show how each aspect of our SMBH model impacts this evolution compared to more common approaches. Finally, we present a science application of this scheme studying the properties and time evolution of an example dual active galactic nucleus system, highlighting how our approach allows simulations to better study galaxy interactions and SMBH mergers in the context of galaxy-BH co-evolution.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5d6af18d6cc004c82ff2f0c5682a4fa0c49a4cba

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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

In Instrumentation

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

Citations in the corpus

• Supermassive black holes and their feedback effects in the IllustrisTNG simulation (2017, methodology): “To predict the inspiral time accurately, higher resolution simulations with explicit dynamical friction treatments (Tremmel et al. 2017a) or more sophisticated post-processing analysis (Kelley et al. 2017a,b) would have to be employed.”
• simba: Cosmological simulations with black hole growth and feedback (2019, background): “…Volonteri et al. 2016; Kaviraj et al. 2017), Eagle (Schaye et al. 2015), MassiveBlack (Khandai et al. 2015), Blue Tides (Feng et al. 2016), Romulus (Tremmel et al. 2017), and Illustris-TNG (Springel et al. 2018) have implemented ever-improving sub-grid models aimed at more successfully reproducing…”
• The quest for dual and binary supermassive black holes: A multi-messenger view (2019, background): “In the last few years, several cosmological hydrodynamic simulations have been carried on with the aim at producing large samples of simulated galaxies (e.g., Magneticum: Hirschmann et al. 2014; Horizon-AGN: Dubois et al. 2014; Illustris: Vogelsberger et al. 2014; EAGLE: Schaye et al. 2015; MassiveB”