HLRB Project h0091
Investigation of the impact of resolution, star formation and feedback in disk galaxy formation simulations
Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP)
Proposing Institution
Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP)
Project Manager
Prof. Matthias Steinmetz
An der Sternwarte 16
14482 Potsdam
Abstract
The formation of disk galaxies is one of the big open questions in galaxy formation theory. Simulated disks are plagued by various problems, most notably a strong loss of angular momentum leading to an object with a compact bulge, and a failure to fit the observed scaling relations for spiral galaxies. In the last few years, there have been several encouraging improvements resulting in more realistic disks. This has been achieved, among others, by increasing the resolution of the simulations substantially and improving the recipes for star formation and feedback and carefully. However, it remains unclear, which (or which combination) of these effects actually is responsible for the improvement. Therefore we are conducting a systematical study of resolution and feedback recipes using N-body simulations with thecode Gadget2. Using two sets of initial conditions, for an isolated halo and a cosmological box, spanning a large range of resolutions, we want to perform runs without star formation to study specifically the angular momentum loss, as well as runs utilizing a number of different star formation and feedback recipes to compare them to each other and also study the differences created by resolution. With this we hope to better disentangle the physics and numerical issues influencing the formation of disk galaxies.
