Simulating realistic disc galaxies with a novel sub-resolution ISM model
Date Issued
2015
Author(s)
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Dolag, Klaus
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Description
We would like to thank the anonymous referee for a careful reading of the manuscript and for constructive comments that helped improving the presentation of the results. We are highly indebted to Volker Springel who provided us with the non-public version of the gadget -3 code, and with Felix Stoehr who provided the IC for the GA series. We acknowledge useful discussions with Federico Marinacci, Gabriella De Lucia and Debora Sijacki. The simulations were carried out at the ‘Centro Interuniversitario del Nord-Est per il Calcolo Elettronico’ (CINECA, Bologna), with CPU time assigned under University-of-Trieste/CINECA and ISCRA grants, and at the CASPUR computing centre with CPU time assigned under two standard grants. This work is supported by the PRIN MIUR 2010-2011 grant ‘The dark Universe and the cosmic evolution of baryons: from current surveys to Euclid’, by the PRIN-MIUR 2012 grant ‘Evolution of Cosmic Baryons’, by the PRIN-INAF 2012 grant ‘The Universe in a Box: Multi-scale Simulations of Cosmic Structures’, by the INFN ‘INDARK’ grant, by the European Commission's FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network CosmoComp (PITN-GA-2009-238356), and by a FRA2012 grant of the University of Trieste. We acknowledge financial support from ‘Consorzio per la Fisica’ of Trieste. KD acknowledges the support by the DFG Cluster of Excellence ‘Origin and structure of the Universe’.
Abstract
We present results of cosmological simulations of disc galaxies carried out with the GADGET-3 TreePM+SPH code, where star formation and stellar feedback are described using our MUlti Phase Particle Integrator model. This description is based on a simple multiphase model of the interstellar medium at unresolved scales, where mass and energy flows among the components are explicitly followed by solving a system of ordinary differential equations. Thermal energy from supernovae is injected into the local hot phase, so as to avoid that it is promptly radiated away. A kinetic feedback prescription generates the massive outflows needed to avoid the overproduction of stars. We use two sets of zoomed-in initial conditions of isolated cosmological haloes with masses (2-3) × 1012 M☉, both available at several resolution levels. In all cases we obtain spiral galaxies with small bulge-over-total stellar mass ratios (B/T ̃ 0.2), extended stellar and gas discs, flat rotation curves and realistic values of stellar masses. Gas profiles are relatively flat, molecular gas is found to dominate at the centre of galaxies, with star formation rates following the observed Schmidt-Kennicutt relation. Stars kinematically belonging to the bulge form early, while disc stars show a clear inside-out formation pattern and mostly form after redshift z = 2. However, the baryon conversion efficiencies in our simulations differ from the relation given by Moster et al. at a 3σ level, thus indicating that our stellar discs are still too massive for the dark matter halo in which they reside. Results are found to be remarkably stable against resolution. This further demonstrates the feasibility of carrying out simulations producing a realistic population of galaxies within representative cosmological volumes, at a relatively modest resolution.
Volume
447
Issue
1
Start page
178
Issn Identifier
0035-8711
Ads BibCode
2015MNRAS.447..178M
Rights
open.access
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