The Aquila comparison project: the effects of feedback and numerical methods on simulations of galaxy formation

By C. Scannapieco, M. Wadepuhl, O. Parry, J. Navarro, Adrian Jenkins, Volker Springel, Romain Teyssier, E. Carlson, Hugh M. P. Couchman, Robert A. Crain and 13 more. 2011

385 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We compare the results of various cosmological gas-dynamical codes used to simulate the formation of a galaxy in the Λ cold dark matter structure formation paradigm. The various runs (13 in total) differ in their numerical hydrodynamical treatment [smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), moving mesh and adaptive mesh refinement] but share the same initial conditions and adopt in each case their latest published model of gas cooling, star formation and feedback. Despite the common halo assembly history, we find large code-to-code variations in the stellar mass, size, morphology and gas content of the galaxy at z= 0, due mainly to the different implementations of star formation and feedback. Compared with observation, most codes tend to produce an overly massive galaxy, smaller and less gas rich than typical spirals, with a massive bulge and a declining rotation curve. A stellar disc is discernible in most simulations, although its prominence varies widely from code to code. There is a well-defined trend between the effects of feedback and the severity of the disagreement with observed spirals. In general, models that are more effective at limiting the baryonic mass of the galaxy come closer to matching observed galaxy scaling laws, but often to the detriment of the disc component. Although numerical convergence is not particularly good for any of the codes, our conclusions hold at two different numerical resolutions. Some differences can also be traced to the different numerical techniques; for example, more gas seems able to cool and become available for star formation in grid-based codes than in SPH. However, this effect is small compared to the variations induced by different feedback prescriptions. We conclude that state-of-the-art simulations cannot yet uniquely predict the properties of the baryonic component of a galaxy, even when the assembly history of its host halo is fully specified. Developing feedback algorithms that can effectively regulate the mass of a galaxy without hindering the formation of high angular momentum stellar discs remains a challenge.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e9cd3225667539ffa90c7966c04c02d3310c47f7

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

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

The lifecycle of molecular clouds in nearby star-forming disc galaxies (2019, background): “100 pc) processes determine how galaxies evolve and form stars (e.g. Scannapieco et al. 2012; Hopkins et al. 2013; Semenov et al. 2018; Kruijssen et al. 2019), imply- © 2019 The Authors ar X iv :1 91 1.”
ATLASGAL — towards a complete sample of massive star forming clumps ⋆ (2014, background): “However, the underlying physical processes involved in the formation of massive stars are still poorly defined and this presents a major hurdle to furthering understanding of the massive star formation itself and how galaxies evolve (e.g. Silk & Mamon 2012; Scannapieco et al. 2012).”
Mass-sheet degeneracy, power-law models and external convergence: Impact on the determination of the Hubble constant from gravitational lensing (2013, background): “As mentioned before, this slope is obtained from dark matter-only simulations, but is most likely altered once baryon cooling comes into play (see, e.g., Scannapieco et al. 2012, and references therein).”
Four phases of angular-momentum buildup in high-z galaxies: from cosmic-web streams through an extended ring to disc and bulge (2014, result): “…the common SPH codes for properly tracing some of the high-resolution hydrodynamical processes involved (e.g. Agertz et al. 2007; Bauer & Springel 2012; Scannapieco et al. 2012), and it seems to be comparable in its performance to new codes using a moving unstructured grid (Bauer & Springel 2012).”
Moving mesh cosmology: numerical techniques and global statistics (2011, background): “In future works, we will explore the consequences of various treatments of feedback effects, which are known to be crucial for the galaxy formation problem (Scannapieco et al. 2012).”
Gravitational probes of dark matter physics (2017, background): “[430, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435, 436]), there are other technical challenges to achieve an accurate calibration for the Mhalo figure of merit.”
Evolution of galaxy stellar masses and star formation rates in the eagle simulations (2014, methodology): “Having a calibrated and well-tested subgrid model is of crucial importance, since it remains the dominant uncertainty in current simulations (Scannapieco et al. 2012).”
FIRE-2 simulations: physics versus numerics in galaxy formation (2017, background): “There have been many studies arguing that the treatment of feedback is more important than details of the hydrodynamic solver in this context (Scannapieco et al. 2012; Power et al. 2014; Hu et al. 2014; Few et al. 2016; Davé et al. 2016; Zhu & Li 2016; Stewart et al. 2017; Kim et al. 2016),…”
Making Galaxies in a Cosmological Context: The Need for Early Stellar Feedback (2012, background): “This high central surface brightness is a common symptom of excess stellar mass in the central galactic region found in many galaxy simulations (Scannapieco et al. 2010; Stinson et al. 2010; Scannapieco et al. 2012).”
The RAVE survey : the Galactic escape speed and the mass of the Milky Way (2013, methodology): “In particular, the numerical recipes for so-called sub-grid physics like star formation and stellar energy feedback can have a significant impact on the simulation result as recently demonstrated in the Aquila code comparison project (Scannapieco et al. 2012).”
How supernova feedback turns dark matter cusps into cores (2011, background): “Through direct comparison of various codes Scannapieco et al. (2011) conclude that, for most practical purposes, the choice of sub-grid model approximation (via which supernova energy is coupled to the gas) is more critical than the numerical technique.”
The BAHAMAS project: Calibrated hydrodynamical simulations for large-scale structure cosmology (2016, background): “…the galaxy formation efficiency to the details of the subgrid prescriptions for feedback, particularly stellar feedback (e.g., Schaye et al. 2010; Scannapieco et al. 2012; Haas et al. 2013; Puchwein & Springel 2013; Vogelsberger et al. 2013; Crain et al. 2015), while the OverWhelmingly Large…”
The formation of disc galaxies in high-resolution moving-mesh cosmological simulations (2013, methodology): “Similarly, in the Aquila comparison project (Scannapieco et al. 2012), the nice (but overly massive) disc formed by ramses was lost once BH feedback was activated. c© 2013 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–27”
Thin disc, thick disc and halo in a simulated galaxy (2012, background): “The first problem has been alleviated by improved feedback (Brook et al. 2004a; Okamoto et al. 2005; Governato et al. 2007; Guedes et al. 2011) but continues to plague even recent simulations (Sales et al. 2012; Scannapieco et al. 2012; Martig et al. 2012).”
Idealized models for galactic disc formation and evolution in ‘realistic’ ΛCDM haloes (2012, background): “Halo C was also studied in the Aquila comparison project (Scannapieco et al. 2012), which compared the results of various cosmological gas-dynamical codes.”
The origin and evolution of the galaxy mass–metallicity relation (2015, methodology): “Such problems is likely a result of imperfect star formation and stellar feedback models implemented in those simulations (see also Scannapieco et al. 2012, for a discussion).”