Speaker:
Dusan Keres
Institution:
UCSD/CGE
Date:
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Time:
4:00 pm
Location:
NS2 1201
ABSTRACT:
I will discuss recent progress and future directions in understanding of galaxy evolution based on cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. Galaxies are growing by smooth gas accretion and merging with other galaxies and they return mass, energy and momentum into circum-galactic and inter-galactic medium. Our modeling of these processes and understanding of galaxy formation is however still in early stages. Future progress will need significant advances in modeling of relevant physical processes which also requires more accurate treatment of hydrodynamics.
I will briefly mention preliminary results from high-resolution cosmological simulations that incorporate realistic new physics in form of resolved star formation driven feedback and then focus on advances in hydrodynamics. Important progress in hydrodynamic accuracy comes in a newly developed moving-mesh code AREPO that combines strengths of previous methods and avoids many of the weaknesses.
We have used this code to simulate galaxy formation in a cosmological context and found that improved accuracy,when compared to standard implementation of smoothed particle hydrodynamics, leads to more extended gaseous disks of galaxies, more efficient cooling of hot gas in halos and other differences. These results show promise in solving some of the outstanding issues in galaxy formation and improve our understanding of connection between galaxies and their gaseous environment.
Host:
James Bullock