HLRB Project pr32pu
Self-consistent Jet Feedback in Cosmological Simulations
Universitaets Sternwarte Muenchen & Max-Planck-Institut fuer extraterrestrische Physik
Proposing Institution
Universitaets Sternwarte Muenchen & Max-Planck-Institut fuer extraterrestrische Physik
Project Manager
Dr. Volker Gaibler
Gießenbachstr.
85748 Garching
Abstract
Cosmological simulations have shown to be an extremely valuable tool to understand the growth of structure in the universe and the formation and evolution of galaxies. They show basic agreement with observervations, although many properties of the gas and stars aren't yet well understood. The reason for this is the much more complex physical processes occuring compared to dark matter. In the last years, it has become clear that in order to understand the mass assembly and mass distribution of massive galaxies, feedback by extragalactic jets (``radio mode feedback'') needs to be included into the galaxy formation models. This is currently only done by simple models of energy release, which ignore the underlying jet physics entirely and rather are a parametrization of the desired impact. Disagreement of these models with observations as well as our aim to understand the important physical processes, make a detailed (but necessarily also spatially much more restricted) modelling necessary.In our project, we combine cosmological simulations with detailed jet simulations at high resolution and explore the interaction of the jet with the environment in greater detail to put these effects on a more quantitatively sound basis and see the interaction acting directly. In particular we will examine the interaction of a jet with a galactic gas disk as well as the interaction with cold accretion flows and the possible enhancement of star formation by the jet in the early phase of galaxy formation. This should allow a better understanding of jet feedback with respect to the two opposing (but both possible) effects of heating and cooling or suppressed and enhanced star formation. Feeding these results back to the cosmological simulation may give new clues to duty cycles and the growth of the central black holes in massive galaxies.
