The Formation of a Realistic Disk Galaxy in Λ-dominated Cosmologies

By Fabio Governato, Lucio Mayer, James Wadsley, J. Gardner, B. Willman, E. Hayashi, Thomas P. Quinn, Joachim Stadel, George Lake. 2002

214 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We simulate the formation of a realistic disk galaxy within the hierarchical scenario of structure formation and study its internal properties to the present epoch. We use a set of smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) simulations, with a high dynamical range and force resolution, that include cooling, star formation, supernovae (SNe) feedback and a redshift-dependent UV background. We compare results from a Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) simulation to a Λ warm dark matter (ΛWDM) (2 keV) simulation that forms significantly less small-scale structure. We show how high mass and force resolution in both the gas and dark-matter components play an important role in solving the angular momentum catastrophe claimed from previous simulations of galaxy formation within the hierarchical framework. Hence, a large disk forms without the need of strong energy injection, the z = 0 galaxies lie close to the I band Tully-Fisher relation, and the stellar material in the disk component has a final specific angular momentum equal to 40% and 90% of the dark halo in the ΛCDM and ΛWDM models, respectively. If rescaled to the Milky Way, the ΛCDM galaxy has an overabundance of satellites, with a total mass in the stellar halo 40% of that in the bulge+disk system. The ΛWDM galaxy has a drastically reduced satellite population and a negligible stellar spheroidal component. Encounters with satellites play only a minor role in disturbing the disk. Satellites possess a variety of star formation histories linked to mergers and pericentric passages along their orbit around the primary galaxy. In both cosmologies, the galactic halo retains most of the baryons accreted and builds up a hot gas phase with a substantial X-ray emission. Therefore, while we have been successful in creating a realistic stellar disk in a massive galaxy within the ΛCDM scenario, energy injection emerges as necessary ingredient to reduce the baryon fraction in galactic halos, independent of the cosmology adopted.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/931d0a8656c7fb33593610c17a7d2654429b7901

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Citations in the corpus

Forming disc galaxies in ΛCDM simulations (2006, background): “GAL1 is the same halo described in Governato et al. (2004).”
Galaxies–intergalactic medium interaction calculation – I. Galaxy formation as a function of large-scale environment (2009, background): “…dark matter (e.g. Navarro & Benz 1991; Weil, Eke & Efstathiou 1998; Thacker & Couchman 2001; Abadi et al. 2003a,b; Sommer-Larsen, Götz & Portinari 2003; Governato et al. 2004; Robertson et al. 2004; Okamoto et al. 2005; Governato et al. 2007; Scannapieco et al. 2008; Zavala, Okamoto & Frenk 2008).”
A primer on hierarchical galaxy formation: the semi-analytical approach (2006, methodology): “Governato et al. (2004) have argued that much of the angular momentum loss can be traced to limited mass or force resolution in previous simulations.”
Effects of feedback on the morphology of galaxy discs (2005, unknown): “Typically, c∗ ≃ 1/30 has been used in simulations of disc formation (e.g. Steinmetz & Navarro 1999; Thacker & Couchman 2001; Abadi et al. 2003a; Governato et al. 2004; Robertson etal.”
Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, background): “…partially succeeded to make disk systems that were as low mass and extended in space and time of formation as those in the real Universe (Abadi et al. 2003a,b; Agertz, Teyssier & Moore 2011; Governato et al. 2004; Piontek & Steinmetz 2011; Robertson et al. 2006a, 2004; Scannapieco et al. 2009).”
The morgana model for the rise of galaxies and active nuclei (2006, background): “…Recchi et al. 2002; Steinmetz & Navarro 2002; Toft et al. 2002; Weinberg, Hernquist & Katz 2002; Springel & Hernquist 2003; Tornatore et al. 2003; Governato et al. 2004) are still struggling both to tame the full complexity of the problem and to reach a sufficient mass and spatial resolution to…”
The Secular Evolution of Disk Structural Parameters (2005, methodology): “The star formation algorithm follows that of Katz (1992), where stars form from cold, Jeans-unstable gas particles in regions of convergent flows (see also Governato et al. 2004; Stinson et al. 2006).”
Effects of supernova feedback on the formation of galaxy discs (2008, methodology): “Many recent studies have attempted to prevent the early cooling of gas and the loss of angular momentum, some of them successfully reproducing disks as big as observed spirals (e.g. Abadi et al. 2003; Governato et al. 2004; Robertson et al. 2004; Okamoto et al. 2005; Governato et al. 2007).”
The Great disk of Milky Way satellites and cosmological sub-structures (2004, background): “…dark matter (CDM) cosmology show that Milky-Way-type (MW) systems have the same scaled theoretical distribution of sub-haloes as rich galaxy clusters, and within 500 kpc they should contain about 500 sub-haloes with masses M >∼ 108 M (Moore et al. 1999; Klypin et al. 1999; Governato et al. 2004).”
MORPHOLOGICAL QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION: MAKING EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES RED (2009, methodology): “…galaxy evolution in the cosmological context, the standard technique consists in running full cosmological simulations with spatial and mass resolutions increased in a certain “zoom-in” area (Katz & White 1993; Governato et al. 2004; Semelin & Combes 2005; Naab et al. 2007; Joung et al. 2009).”
The Aquila comparison project: the effects of feedback and numerical methods on simulations of galaxy formation (2011, background): “…even debate about whether the difficulties in reproducing realistic discs are predominantly a consequence of insufficient numerical resolution (e.g. Governato et al. 2004), inappropriate modelling of the relevant physics (e.g. Mayer, Governato & Kaufmann 2008; Piontek & Steinmetz 2011) or a…”
A Merger-driven Scenario for Cosmological Disk Galaxy Formation (2005, background): “…these discrepancies in a cosmological context have mainly relied on increasing the impact of feedback from star formation (Weil et al. 1998; Sommer-Larsen et al. 1999, 2003; Thacker & Couchman 2000, 2001; Abadi et al. 2003a; Governato et al. 2004; Robertson et al. 2004; Okamoto et al. 2005).”
The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments (2014, background): “…of the low-density IGM, but several groups have now independently succeeded in producing disc galaxies with more realistic sizes and masses (e.g. Governato et al. 2004, 2010; Okamoto et al. 2005; Agertz et al. 2011; Guedes et al. 2011; McCarthy et al. 2012; Brook et al. 2012; Stinson et al.…”
Formation of Early-Type Galaxies from Cosmological Initial Conditions (2005, background): “…simulations from realistic cosmological initial conditions have been done so far, and most of these have concentrated on the formation of disk galaxies rather than early-type spheroidal systems (Sommer-Larsen et al. 2003; Abadi et al. 2003; Governato et al. 2004; Robertson et al. 2004).”
Feedback in simulations of disc-galaxy major mergers (2005, methodology): “These works use a wide range of star-formation efficiencies that are both higher (Katz 1992; Navarro & White 1993; Kobayashi 2004; Governato et al. 2004; Kawata & Gibson 2005) and lower (MH96; S00; Sommer-Larsen, Götz & Portinari 2003; Springel & Hernquist 2003) than ours.”
Gravitational probes of dark matter physics (2017, background): “the time, namely that they were too efficient at forming stars (this is still somewhat of a problem on Milky Way scales), and that the disks of galaxies were too dense (the “angular momentum catastrophe”) [368].”
The formation of disc galaxies in a ΛCDM universe (2010, background): “…own Milky Way, has been studied numerically in fully ΛCDM cosmological context by many authors (e.g. Abadi et al. 2003b; Sommer-Larsen et al. 2003; Governato et al. 2004; Robertson et al. 2004; Okamoto et al. 2005; Governato et al. 2007; Croft et al. 2009; Scannapieco et al. 2009; Piontek &…”
Self-regulated star formation in galaxies via momentum input from massive stars (2011, result): “This is in contrast to many results in the literature, where free parameters in the highdensity star formation law are adjusted to approximately reproduce the KS relation (Springel & Hernquist 2003a; Governato et al. 2004; Dubois & Teyssier 2008; Agertz, Teyssier & Moore 2009).”
HOW DO DISKS SURVIVE MERGERS? (2008, background): “…with greatly improved numerical resolution (Weil et al. 1998; Sommer-Larsen et al. 1999, 2003; Thacker & Couchman 2000, 2001; Abadi et al. 2003; Governato et al. 2004, 2007; Robertson et al. 2004; Okamoto et al. 2005; Scannapieco et al. 2008), in order to enable disks to survive their expected…”