The formation of disc galaxies in high-resolution moving-mesh cosmological simulations

By F. Marinacci, Rüdiger Pakmor, Volker Springel. 2013

268 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of eight Milky Way-sized haloes that have been previously studied with dark matter only in the Aquarius project. For the first time, we employ the moving-mesh code AREPO in zoom simulations combined with a comprehensive model for galaxy formation physics designed for large0 cosmological simulations. Our simulations form in most of the eight haloes strongly disc-dominated systems with realistic rotation curves, close to exponential surface density profiles, a stellar-mass to halo-mass ratio that matches expectations from abundance matching techniques, and galaxy sizes and ages consistent with expectations from large galaxy surveys in the local Universe. There is no evidence for any dark matter core formation in our simulations, even so they include repeated baryonic outflows by supernova-driven winds and black hole quasar feedback. For one of our haloes, the object studied in the recent `Aquila' code comparison project, we carried out a resolution study with our techniques, covering a dynamic range of 64 in mass resolution. Without any change in our feedback parameters, the final galaxy properties are reassuringly similar, in contrast to other modelling techniques used in the field that are inherently resolution dependent. This success in producing realistic disc galaxies is reached, in the context of our interstellar medium treatment, without resorting to a high density threshold for star formation, a low star formation efficiency, or early stellar feedback, factors deemed crucial for disc formation by other recent numerical studies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/937eb74af6440222cabe8cac3d2c57a1fc2f64c9

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Citations in the corpus

ON THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN STAR FORMATION AND FEEDBACK IN GALAXY FORMATION SIMULATIONS (2014, methodology): “While the models of Marinacci et al. (2014) demonstrate convincing resolution convergence, as well as encouraging galaxy properties, this neither negates previous work nor comes as a surprise; Marinacci et al. adopt a stellar feedback approach based on a kinetic wind scheme in which the wind…”
First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: a tale of two elements - chemical evolution of magnesium and europium (2017, methodology): “Thus, the fraction of stars with high circularities, f >0.7, determines how much of a galaxy’s stellar population resides in the disk component (Marinacci et al. 2014; Genel et al. 2015).”
First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the stellar mass content of groups and clusters of galaxies (2017, methodology): “…in galaxy formation simulations have mostly 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.…”
The illustris simulation: Public data release (2015, methodology): “ds may be the cause for spurious starformation in the circumgalactic medium around Milky Waylike galaxies, at large distances from the natural, dense sites of star formation activity (i.e. disks, see Marinacci et al. (2014)). However, no observational data are available to properly quantify such phe”
The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: calibration of subgrid physics and model variations (2015, background): “8 Modern semi-analytic models often adopt distribution sampling techniques to efficiently calibrate their many free parameters (Kampakoglou, Trotta & Silk 2008; Henriques et al. 2009, 2013, 2014; Bower et al. 2010; Lu et al. 2012; Mutch, Poole & Croton 2013). formation of disc galaxies similar to th”
Simulating galaxy formation with the IllustrisTNG model (2017, background): “We also note that, solving an issue identified by Marinacci et al. (2014), we have corrected the upper limit of the normalization integral for the SNIa delay time distribution from infinite to the Hubble time.”
Galaxies as simple dynamical systems: observational data disfavor dark matter and stochastic star formation (2014, methodology): “For example, [158] apply their new hydrodynamic algorithm AREPO5, which relies on a moving unstructured Voronoi tessellation together with a finite volume approach.”
NIHAO project – I. Reproducing the inefficiency of galaxy formation across cosmic time with a large sample of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations (2015, methodology): “…resolution of our simulations compared to a number of state-of-the-art zoom-in (ERIS - Guedes et al. 2011; Governato et al. 2012; Aumer et al. 2013; Marinacci et al. 2014; FIRE - Hopkins et al. 2014) and large volume (ILLUSTRIS - Vogelsberger et al. 2014; EAGLE - Schaye et al. 2015) simulations.”
Quenching and ram pressure stripping of simulated Milky Way satellite galaxies (2017, background): “…SNII, SNIa and AGB stars (Vogelsberger et al. 2013); the formation of black holes and feedback from active galactic nuclei (Springel et al. 2005a; Marinacci et al. 2014; Grand et al. 2017); and a spatially uniform but time varying UV background that completes reionization at redshift six…”
Introducing the Illustris Project: simulating the coevolution of dark and visible matter in the Universe (2014, methodology): “These stars are typically classified as disc stars (see also Marinacci et al. 2014a).”
One Law to Rule Them All: The Radial Acceleration Relation of Galaxies (2016, background): “Comparison with hydrodynamical simulations Wu & Kroupa (2015) compared the data of McGaugh (2004) with cosmological simulations of galaxy formation (Agertz et al. 2011; Guedes et al. 2011; Aumer et al. 2013; Marinacci et al. 2014), finding poor agreement.”
Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, background): “The outflow supresses the formation of stellar bulges from the low angular momentum gas at high redshift and enriches the circum-galactic medium with metals (Brook et al. 2012, Christensen et al. 2016, Governato et al. 2010, Marinacci et al. 2014).”
Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback (2016, methodology): “These are modified and extended as follows: • We use isotropic winds from star formation with 10% of the energy injected thermally (Marinacci et al. 2014), instead of purely kinetically with a bipolar orientation as in Illustris.”
The star formation main sequence and stellar mass assembly of galaxies in the Illustris simulation (2014, unknown): “…high-resolution runs presented in Figure 4 suggests that the fraction of starbursts is converged, it is possible that this conclusion will change if the resolution is increased significantly, as is often done using zoom-in simulations of galaxies (e.g.; Guedes et al. 2011; Marinacci et al. 2014).”
The Auriga Project: the properties and formation mechanisms of disc galaxies across cosmic time (2016, methodology): “19, we compare the z = 0 SFR of the simulated galaxies with nearby galaxies taken from SDSS MPA-JHU DR76, divided into blue and red sequences (as in Scannapieco et al. 2012; Marinacci et al. 2014a).”